


By Lamplight

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Wings, Angst, Castiel (Supernatural) is Bad at Feelings, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Dean Needs Castiel, Dean Wearing Castiel's Trenchcoat, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Dean's Healthy Sense of Self-Worth, Dean's Soul, Dream Sequences, First Kiss, Fluff, Gratuitous Caregiving Scenes, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, I do have a reputation to uphold after all, Kidnapping, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Out, Mentions of self-harm, Motel Rooms, Mutual Pining, Now with more angst!, Pining Castiel, Pre-Slash, Profound Bond, Protective Castiel, Self-Loathing, Sensory Deprivation, Soul Bond, Torture, Trauma and recovery, Vampires, Wings, ambiguous timeline, but only like a little bit of fluff, like so so much, mentions of past suicide attempt, so much of it, they are both so very bad at feelings, which is apparently already a tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-06-18 01:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15474129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: Dean goes missing on a routine hunt. After six months of fruitless searching, Castiel is clearing out a nest of vampires when he feels the touch of a soul he knows well. The Dean he finds there is battered, barely intact, but Castiel isn't about to let him go. Not without a fight. They're far from home and Sam isn't picking up the phone, but Castiel will do whatever it takes to put Dean Winchester back together, piece by piece.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eloise_Enchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloise_Enchanted/gifts).



> This fic was meant to be short but...um...the story kind of ran away with me and now it's going to be...not as short. Stick around for more angst, so much more angst.
> 
> This is a gift for the lovely [Eloise_Enchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloise_Enchanted), who has been an awesome beta reader on several occasions on pretty short notice. <3 Thank you and I'm sorry for the months-long wait!

Castiel is clearing out a nest of vampires when he feels it, a faint brush against the invisible edge of an outstretched wing, feather-light like a whisper of snow: the unmistakable touch of Dean Winchester's soul.

It unbalances him; he stumbles, mid-blow, and the last vampire ducks around his blade and lunges for his throat, its needle-like teeth bared. Castiel sidesteps and catches the creature solidly on the forehead with his open hand, smiting it into oblivion as it careens past.

The vamp's corpse hits the ground with a lifeless thump. Silence reigns in the empty trailer park. Surrounded by dead vampires, Castiel stands, listening as hard as he can.

It was a roving nest: seven vampires, driving a beat-up brace of pickups and a battered trailer from town to town, leaving bloody victims in their wake. They didn't need to be careful because they didn't stay in one place for long enough. Castiel had put the dots together, tracked them through three towns before he finally caught up with them here. They'd been camped on the outskirts of this town for a day; he'd waited just long enough to be sure they were all present before moving in for the kill.

He strains in the darkness now, searching for whatever flicker of Dean had made contact with his grace during the whirl of combat. He tells himself that he had to have been mistaken, somehow. It's been six months since Dean disappeared, vanished without a trace on a routine hunt in Louisiana. Six months of fruitless searching, six months since Castiel saw Sam smile, or saw the younger Winchester with anything other than grim focus carved on his face. Three months since Sam locked up the Bunker and drove the Impala at the horizon without so much as a backwards glance at Castiel. Five weeks since Sam stopped answering Castiel's calls altogether.

Six months, and now this. Castiel slips his blade back into his sleeve and begins to move cautiously through the campsite, stepping around the felled vampires that not long ago had been walking and talking and planning their next kill.

The camp is still in disarray from the fight. He checks the cabs and beds of the two pickup trucks, kicks lightly at the bedrolls on the ground, the tarp stretched against the side of one vehicle like a makeshift tent. The door of the trailer is padlocked shut; Castiel wraps his fingers around the cool metal and wrenches it off with one hand.

The interior of the trailer is dark and dusty and smells like blood and bitter fear. Castiel steps inside, moving past a sagging sofa, setting his feet down carefully around scattered beer bottles.

There's a figure huddled at the far end of the trailer, below a metal rail that's been affixed to the wall at about waist height. Castiel pulls to a halt a few feet away, his mouth going dry. He barely hears the clatter of his blade hitting the floor. He can see perfectly in the dark. He knows who he's looking at.

Dean doesn't move when Castiel approaches, or when Castiel drops to his knees beside him. Dean's head is lolling forward onto his chest, his breathing shallow and uneven. He's still wearing the t-shirt he'd been wearing on that hunt in Louisiana, though it's bloodstained and filthy now and the flannel overshirt is nowhere to be seen. His arms are stretched over his head, the wrists manacled individually to the rail above him.

"Dean," says Castiel, his voice cracking in horror and disbelief. It's been six months. Six _months_ , and now this. He reaches out, then hesitates, afraid that his fingers will pass through Dean as if through smoke, afraid that this will prove some sort of figment. Even now, at this distance, he can sense Dean's soul only dimly, muted as if viewed through warped glass.

He stops with his fingers hovering an inch from Dean's cheek, swallowing hard before dropping his hand a few inches to touch Dean on the shoulder instead.

Dean goes berserk.

He'd seemed unconscious, and he hadn't moved when Castiel approached. But when Castiel's hand lands on his shoulder, Dean wrenches away with a muffled cry, thrashing against his bonds.

"Dean, it's _me_." Castiel tries to catch Dean's shoulders. A jolt of pain goes through his knee as Dean's foot connects with it. "It's Castiel—"

Dean is pressing himself as far into the corner of the trailer as the manacles will allow, his feet scrabbling against the floor. Panicked, terrified sounds are jerking out of him. Castiel gives up trying to hold on to him and sits back on his heels.

"Dean, look at me," he orders.

Dean doesn't move. He still has his head bent, his arms extended awkwardly over his head, his breath coming harsh and ragged. Castiel tips his head to peer up at the manacles, and grits his teeth in anger as he takes in the irregular rows of puncture marks scattered liberally across Dean's forearms and wrists. How long have the vampires been feeding on him? How long did they have him chained up like an animal, in the dark? What have they done to him, that he doesn't even recognize Castiel?

"Dean," Castiel murmurs, but the man in front of him doesn't react to his name being spoken. Castiel hesitates, then reaches up for the cuff on Dean's right wrist. He snaps the chain easily in his hands. Dean jumps, his head snapping up as he yanks his arm tightly to his chest.

Castiel had meant to keep a grasp on Dean's wrist, but he forgets to do that as he stares in dismay at Dean's eyes, sealed shut and almost completely obscured by two patches of a tarry black substance.

He reaches out, horrified and alarmed, but Dean jerks away from the brush of Castiel's fingers and curls in on himself.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Castiel says, gently.

Dean doesn't respond, and on a sudden thought Castiel leans to the side and—yes, more of that black substance in Dean's ears. _Oh, Dean_ , Castiel thinks. It isn't a question of whether Dean recognizes him—Dean isn't able see _or_ hear him. And perhaps, Castiel thinks with mounting horror, perhaps Dean hasn't been able to see or hear _anything_ for—for—as long as six months, maybe.

Cas reaches for the second set of handcuffs. The moment the chain snaps, Dean jolts into motion. He clips Castiel across the face with a wild swing and then launches himself past, towards the door. Castiel reels back, more from shock than from the pain of the blow, which was a glancing one, without any power behind it.

" _Dean_!" he calls, belatedly remembering that nothing he says is getting through.

Dean gets his legs under him, takes two staggering steps, collapses down to his hands and knees, tries to rise again and fails. Miraculously, he avoids the furniture as he drags himself towards the door. When Castiel reaches him, he fights like a wild thing, lands weak little blows on Castiel's arms and face.

Castiel ignores the feeble onslaught and grips Dean's shoulders and twists, forcing Dean over onto his back.

"Dean," he says pointlessly, "please, it's _me_ , I—"

Dean thrashes, slamming his head against the edge of the sofa as he tries to roll onto his side. His mouth parts in soundless terror as he pants for breath.

Castiel throws a leg over Dean's torso and straddles him, using his body weight to pin Dean down. It works, but it feels like the wrong move; Dean immediately arches his back, scrabbling at Castiel's forearms, as his soul explodes with terror. A single choked, bitten-off noise emerges from his mouth. Castiel is suddenly, brutally aware of the forced intimacy of the position, and his stomach turns over in the face of the black well of despair and rage emanating up from the man beneath him.

"I'm so sorry, Dean," he mutters. He grabs the nearest flailing arm, ignoring Dean's frantic attempts to pull free.

He grips Dean's wrist as tightly as he dares, a fresh burst of anger curling in his chest as he looks down at Dean's arm, notices again the long rows of puncture marks, some of them heavily infected, and the raw lacerations peeping out from beneath the dangling cuff.

Dean's back is still arched, his chest heaving, throat bared as he rests his head against the linoleum floor. Castiel can see bruises mottling Dean's skin, and an ugly, mostly-healed gash along the side of his neck, as if a vampire got greedy and tried to rip open an artery.

Castiel reaches out with his free hand and presses his palm against Dean's forehead. He waits to see the injuries fade, the torn skin knitting itself back together, but the rush of his grace is blocked by— _something_. He frowns, pushes harder, but it's useless. Dean's body shuts out his grace like a ring of holy fire, refusing it, refusing to heal.

"That doesn't make sense," he mutters aloud. Dean whimpers, low in his throat. Castiel makes a decision—he can figure this out later, elsewhere, once he has Dean out of this place.

He turns Dean's hand over and writes on his palm. C-A-S, he writes, and waits.

Dean goes completely still. His mouth moves noiselessly, makes the shape of a name.

Castiel writes again: C-A-S.

Dean lets out his breath in a soft gasp. Those dreadful smears of black give his face the illusion of eyes, peering through the dark. Castiel squeezes Dean's hand, then lets it go. He waits.

"Cas," Dean rasps finally. The word ghosts out of him, barely audible. Then, "No. No, you can't be—he's not—he isn't—"

Dean reaches out blindly, fumbling until his fingers bump against Castiel's nose and cheek. He splays them out on Castiel's face, runs them lightly along Castiel's brow and temple. Dean's jaw trembles. His hand is shaking. His soul contracts in on itself, the already-faint pulse of it dwindling even further to Castiel's perception.

Castiel reaches for Dean's face in turn, feels the feverish heat of Dean's skin. He presses his hand to the side of Dean's face, mirroring the contact of Dean's fingertips against his own skin.

I, he writes on Dean's palm with his other hand. L. L. _I'll_. G-E-T. Y-O-U. O-U-T. Dean is utterly motionless beneath him, his head lifted as if he's trying to listen for the sound of the letters.

Castiel slowly writes the sentence, then says it aloud for good measure.

"I'll get you out of here," he tells Dean.

Dean curls his fingers down over his palm. Slowly, warily, he nods.

Castiel carefully shifts, getting to his feet and lifting Dean— _Dean_ , he can't stop thinking in disbelief, Dean is _here_ , battered but beautiful and _alive_ —to a standing position. Dean's legs give way almost as soon as his weight comes down on them; he stumbles heavily into Castiel, almost bringing them both down to the floor.

"Careful," Castiel says automatically, before he remembers that Dean can't hear him. He wraps his arm more tightly around Dean's shoulders, but Dean is already sinking back towards the ground, body wracked with tremors, feet scraping over the scuffed linoleum as he struggles to stand. Castiel frowns, thinking; he doesn't want to embarrass Dean, but he itches to get them both out of this place with its stink of blood and fear. To get Dean somewhere safe. And, too, he can hear the distant whine of sirens echoing faintly through the night, too faint for human ears to catch.

He makes up his mind and with an easy movement, he slips his other arm behind Dean's knees and straightens, lifting Dean in his arms. He hears Dean's startled exhale, feels Dean's fingers momentarily tighten over his shoulders, Dean's body vibrating with tension as Castiel strides towards the exit. Castiel can still catch the muted roiling of Dean's soul, its ragged fear and uncertainty, the pain from the wounds Castiel couldn't heal. But Dean is alive—Dean is _alive_ , Castiel reminds himself, and nothing else matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the chronology: so the timing of this fic is somewhat deliberately ambiguous. It should be considered set in later seasons, say season 11 or 12, but during a theoretical six-month period where nothing else is going on and no characters other than Dean and Castiel (and Sam) need to be taken into consideration. So I have altered canon to the extent that I created the 6+ month gap in which the story takes place.


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel parks the pickup outside the shabby motel where he's been staying. Dean hasn't spoken since they left the vampires' campground, and Castiel can't help wondering if Dean really believes he's safe, or if he's just biding his time for another escape attempt.

Dean moves the moment Castiel turns off the engine, unbuckling the seatbelt Castiel had carefully fastened and reaching for the door handle. He struggles with it for a moment, his breath hitching audibly until he finally manages to open the door—only to slither bonelessly out onto the asphalt, his legs giving way beneath him as if cut by an invisible sword.

Castiel jumps out the other side, angry with himself for not moving more quickly. He isn't used to seeing Dean like this, can't remember ever seeing Dean this weak—although that's no excuse for his own carelessness, of course. He drops the keys in his pocket and hurries around to the pickup's other side, where Dean is slumped on his hands and knees.

Dean flinches violently at the first touch, but he stays where he is, head lowered and hands white-knuckled on the asphalt. He doesn't resist when Castiel lifts him in his arms again, although his breathing gets louder and faster, taking on the cadence of barely controlled panic. He doesn't speak, either—remains as silent as he'd been during the drive to the motel, his soul shifting restlessly, like a trapped bird. He feels feather-light in Castiel's arms, a sharp reminder of how inherently fragile the human body is. Castiel's superiors would have chided him about needing such a reminder, once.

 _They're not like us_ , _Castiel_ , he can hear them saying. _And you should not strive to be like them_.

Inside, Castiel deposits Dean carefully on the edge of the single bed and crouches in front of him. Dean keeps his head down, his hands curled into loose fists at his sides.

"I need to see what they did to your eyes," says Castiel, before remembering, again, that Dean can't hear him. He reaches out instead, takes hold of Dean's chin and tips it up until he can see the black patches, glossy in the motel room lamplight. Dean twitches slightly at the touch, but again offers no resistance. His jaw is tightly clenched; Castiel can see minute tremors running through it.

Castiel reaches out and brushes his fingers over the dark substance. It feels smooth and slightly tacky, like a sort of polymer or epoxy. He doesn't have a chance to investigate further; the touch seems to break through some barrier inside Dean, who wrenches violently away, flinging himself off the bed onto the dingy carpet below. Castiel lunges in an attempt to catch him and is met with a sharp pain in his shin as Dean lands a kick out of what must be sheer luck.

"Dean, please," he says in exasperation, knowing full well that speaking is pointless. Dean scrabbles away in a crouch, his hands skating blindly across the floor as he feels for the wall. His head is held low, chin tucked in towards his chest. He doesn't utter a word, but it's his terrified breathing that finally sends Castiel striding forward. He drops to a crouch, pinning Dean to the wall with a knee to his chest, and claps his hands over Dean's ears.

Dean flails wildly, but Castiel ignores the blows and focuses instead on his grace, channeling it out through his palms. He might not be able to heal Dean, but this external, physical barrier presents no such issue. He concentrates on not allowing his grace to pass beyond the black substance, not letting it burn or even brush against Dean's body. He isn't entirely successful, and Dean gasps in pain under his touch, but Castiel holds him in place and _pushes_ his grace out, into where the epoxy is wedged deep and unforgiving in Dean's ear canals. He can feel the material heating beneath his hands, vibrating on a molecular level as it resists the influx of power, and then it gives way, crumbles like dust under his touch.

Dean rocks backwards against the wall.

"Dean?" says Castiel cautiously. He eases up on the pinning knee.

Dean makes a tiny noise, low in the back of his throat.

"Dean, I'm here." Castiel slowly lifts his hands away from Dean's ears. "You're safe. I'm going to fix your eyes now."

Dean doesn't answer, and Castiel stops, his fingers a hairsbreadth from Dean's plastered eyes. He's suddenly afraid that Dean's ears are more damaged than he thought, that it isn't as simple a matter as removing some epoxy. "Dean? Can you hear me?"

Dean doesn't respond verbally, but a tremble racks his body, and he pushes forward suddenly, until Castiel's fingertips rest against the substance. He curls his hands into the fabric of Castiel's coat.

Castiel pushes his grace outward a second time, trying to work carefully but quickly, hating the way Dean's body goes painfully rigid beneath him, the way Dean's breath hisses out from between his teeth. But it's done in a moment, the epoxy dissolving into nothing, and then Dean's eyes—a lump rises in Castiel's throat as he fully realizes how much he'd missed Dean's eyes, how little hope he'd had to ever see them again—blink slowly open. Dean ducks his head immediately, squinting in the light that Castiel had turned on out of habit.

"Dean," he says, "can you see me?"

Dean responds finally, a tiny jerk of his head, shaking it no.

"Your retinas will have degraded," says Castiel carefully. "I'm...something's blocking my ability to heal you, I'm sorry. Just try to relax. Let them adjust to the light."

Dean appears poised to do anything but, his body taut and shaking. He flinches as Castiel reaches toward him, clearly able to see movement at least. Castiel hesitates another moment and then puts his hand on Dean's shoulder, squeezing with what he hopes is reassuring pressure.

The effect is immediate; Dean lets out his breath in a soft gasp, and his whole body cants ever so slightly toward Castiel. Castiel swallows and puts his other hand against the back of Dean's head, holding him steady.

"Cas," Dean croaks at last, his voice raw and whisper-quiet. "Cas—you—I—"

"You're safe," Castiel says again. All the other things he wants to say crowd insistently on the tip of his tongue, and he holds them back with an effort. Holds back, too, the overwhelming desire to kiss Dean that surges up inside him with the force of a tangible thing. He lets go of Dean, finding the physical contact suddenly too much to take—Dean is so incredibly solid under his hand, he is _right there_ in front of Castiel, and there's so much _heat_ emanating from him, have human bodies always burned like this, and Castiel never noticed?

"I didn't think it was really you," Dean rasps. He sags against the wall, his eyes never leaving Castiel's. "I thought—I thought they—" His face twists in terror, his gaze darting suddenly around the room like a frightened bird.

"The vampires are dead," says Castiel firmly. "I killed them. And you need to rest, now."

"They—no, I can't, I _can't_." Dean looks wildly from side to side. His hands fumble suddenly at the front of Castiel's coat, pushing. "They're, they're going to come back for me—you have to go, they'll find you, _you have to go_ —"

"Dean," says Castiel, cutting through Dean's frantic words. He puts his hand back onto Dean's shoulder. It's where his mark used to be—he makes the connection now—the hand-shaped print that had manifested on Dean's body when Castiel rebuilt it, an echo of the stamp on Dean's freshly-raised soul.

Dean relaxes very, very slightly under the touch.

"You are not," says Castiel, "going back there. They will not be coming for you. I am not letting them take you again. Do you understand?"

"Cas—"

"Do you _understand_ , Dean?"

Dean locks eyes with him, squinting, and whatever his damaged retinas can process must reassure him, because he finally nods and the tension drains out of his shoulders.

"You—killed them? They're all—?"

"All of them are dead," says Castiel firmly. "You're safe, Dean, but listen to me—you need medical care. I can't heal you, you need a hospital."

"No," says Dean vehemently. "No hospitals, I don't—I can't—" He hunches over, his pulse spiking, the sound thunderous in Castiel's ears.

"Alright," says Castiel hastily. "Alright, just let me help you, Dean, will you let me?"

Dean shivers. He nods again. Scrubs one hand against his face, a clumsy, vulnerable gesture.

Castiel lifts two fingers to Dean's brow, hoping he can do this much even if his healing is blocked. Dean swallows, his jaw trembling, his hands knotted together in front of him.

"Cas," he says, "where's—"

Castiel's fingers make contact with his temple and Dean slumps, boneless, against the corner.

Castiel knows exactly what Dean was about to ask, and he also knows he doesn't have an answer for that question. After he carries Dean back to the bed, he hesitates, then pulls out his phone and dials. Sam's mailbox is full, not that he'd returned Castiel's calls before that happened. Castiel tries a few backup numbers, even though he knows there's no point.

"Sam," he says when one finally returns a prompt for a message, instead of a dial tone, "it's Castiel. It's—I've found him, I've found Dean." He hesitates. He's called this number before, and he doubts Sam is still listening to these messages. "Call me," he finishes helplessly.

He hangs up and turns back to Dean, asleep on top of the cheap rayon comforter. Dean's face is calm, his expression almost peaceful. Castiel can feel the quiet hum of his soul, restless even in slumber. It's harder to sense than it normally would be and Castiel pushes away the nagging worry over why that could be. On Dean's wrists, the broken handcuffs glint in the lamplight. Castiel reaches down and snaps them off easily, grimacing as he takes in the infected lacerations underneath.

He takes Dean's shoes off, but hesitates when it comes to the rest of his clothing. Castiel has been human and he remembers sleeping being far more comfortable with fewer layers; he knows, too, that Sam and Dean prefer specific garments for sleeping when possible. But the idea of undressing Dean feels far too intimate, too fraught with peril, so Castiel quashes the impulse and moves to examine the wounds on Dean's arms. The skin around the half-healed bites—there are so _many_ of them—is hot and swollen under his fingers. He curses himself for not having any first aid supplies on hand, but then, how could he have known he would need them?

 _I need to leave_ , he realizes slowly. If he's to care for Dean here, without doctors, without his grace, he needs supplies. Not just medicine and bandages, but food, too, and clothes Dean can wear that aren't torn and dirty. He tangles his fingers anxiously around his keys, thinking. Eventually common sense wins out over his worry. The motel might be shoddy, but it _is_ peaceful; Castiel hasn't been disturbed over the course of his stay. Dean should be asleep for several hours. He'll be as safe here as anywhere, while Castiel picks up what they need.

He takes one last look down at Dean, deeply asleep on the bed. The wounds stand out starkly from his skin, painted yellow-gold as it is by the lamplight. Castiel has a hand half-raised toward them before he catches himself, remembers anew that he's helpless to heal them. He tries anyway, letting his fingertips rest on Dean's forehead, seeking a way in with his grace. It doesn't work, of course. But he ends up standing there all the same, his fingers brushing the feverish heat of Dean's face, reassuring himself that Dean is really there, lying asleep in front of him.

He supposes, for all that he'd fought not to give up hope throughout the last six months, he'd lost a lot of it, just as Sam had, drained away with every false lead and dead end. Maybe it makes sense, since he'd also lost the one thing he'd put his faith in over all these years.

Only now Dean is _here_ , breathing and alive despite it all, and maybe it's not surprising that Castiel is wholly unprepared for the _nearness_ of him, the way his body takes up space, the way his sleep-slow heartbeat is reverberating through the room.

Castiel swallows, tearing his eyes away from Dean's face.

"Dean, I—" he says to the quiet motel room.

But his words, of course, aren't what Dean needs. Castiel shivers and pulls his hand away, his stymied grace pooling in his fingertips like an electrical current. He turns and moves quickly to the door, letting himself out into the dregs of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your lovely comments on the last chapter, guys! It's super encouraging. ^_^


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel drives to a 24-hour drugstore and picks up first aid supplies and the toiletries he's never needed himself, raids the food aisles for water and microwaveable containers of soup. He looks for clothing but finds none, and decides he can make another run in the morning, once more stores have opened.

Dean isn't on the bed when Castiel returns, arms laden with bags, and for a moment Castiel experiences a sharp jolt of panic. Then he registers the shape huddled on the floor, wedged tightly between the bed and the bedside table. It's Dean, eyes huge and dark in the lamplight, arms wrapped around his knees.

Castiel drops the bags and hurries forward. Dean shivers and blinks at him.

"You were supposed to get some sleep," Castiel says, immediately regretting the accusatory note in his voice. Pain and fear still thread through Dean's soul, muted strands of scarlet and grey, like creeping ivy.

"I thought I dreamed you," says Dean bluntly. He furrows his brow. "I woke up, and...you weren't there, so I thought..." A spasm of fear crosses his face, shadow-like.

"I just went to get supplies," says Castiel. "I need to look at your wounds. Some of them are infected."

Dean squints at him. "Can't die," he says vaguely. "They said."

Perturbed, Castiel holds out a hand. Dean frowns at it for a moment before slowly reaching out to take it. Castiel pulls him up to sit on the edge of the bed, before heading over to the bags he'd dropped in his haste.

"Drink," he says, holding out one of the bottles of water. Dean takes it and Castiel rummages through the bags, pulling out the first aid supplies. When he looks up, Dean is still hunched over the unopened bottle, his hand shaking as he tries to break the seal on the cap, his jaw knotted tight.

Castiel puts down a roll of bandages. "Let me—"

"I can do it myself," Dean snaps without looking up. A muscle in his shoulder jumps and the bottle tumbles off his lap onto the floor. " _Fuck_ —"

Castiel stoops and halts the bottle's progress as it rolls across the cheap carpet. He twists the cap off and offers it back.

Dean takes it without meeting Castiel's eyes. He takes a slow sip, then tips his head back and drinks deep, eyes screwed shut, water spilling over his chin. Castiel pulls his eyes away from the motion of Dean's throat and rips open a pack of gauze.

It takes a long time to attend to Dean's wounds. The cuts left by the handcuffs ooze blood and a clear fluid, and Dean jerks in pain when Castiel touches them.

"How have these not gone septic?" Castiel says to Dean.

"Can't...m'blood. Keep it clean. He...they said." Dean seems even less lucid than he'd been earlier, his voice slurred and his head tipped lazily to one side.

Castiel lays down a towel and drains the infected wounds as best as he can, dousing them with isopropyl alcohol and covering them in squares of gauze. He is grateful for the little first aid he'd learned from the Winchesters in past years, but wishes he'd paid more attention even to that. More than that, he wishes Sam were around, with his steady hands, the calm efficiency built out of years playing field doctor in motel rooms like this one. Dean hisses at the first splash of isopropyl, and grabs for Castiel's coat with his free hand, burying his fingers in the fabric.

"Careful," says Castiel automatically, worried the sudden motion will aggravate the wounds, unbandaged as they are. Dean lets go immediately, yanking his hand back as if burned and pulling it tightly against his midriff. Castiel misses the touch instantly, but chides himself for the feeling; it seems perilously too close to taking advantage of Dean somehow, of his need for comfort in this weakened state.

He caps the bottle and steps back briefly to set it on the nightstand. Dean scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm and squints up at Castiel, as if seeing him for the first time.

"You're blurry," he says, with something like regret in his voice.

"Lack of stimulation probably caused your retinas to deteriorate."

"Gee, you think?" says Dean, and for a moment he sounds like the old Dean, sniping at Castiel.

"How long...how long did you have that over your eyes, Dean?"

"I don't...I couldn't keep track," says Dean. "Of time. Two...or three. Months. I think. I don't..." He hesitates. "Cas, how long...how long was I..."

"Six months," says Castiel. It's his turn to hesitate. "And four days."

Dean swears softly under his breath. He rocks forward on the bed, and for a moment Castiel braces, ready to take his weight, but Dean doesn't lean into him, just bows his head and sits, quiet, his body angled towards Castiel.

Castiel focuses on applying antibiotic cream to the wounds on Dean's arm. He wishes, again, that Sam were here. Sam would find the right words to say, the right kind of comfort to give. Castiel, clumsily daubing the ointment onto Dean's broken skin, can't even offer the healing of his grace.

As if reading his mind, a few minutes later Dean says quietly, "Sam?"

Castiel pauses, midway through wrapping a long white bandage around Dean's wrist.

"Cas?" says Dean hoarsely. An edge of panic sharpens his voice; he straightens a little.

Castiel hesitates, searching for the words. "Sam left," he says finally.

Dean stares, uncomprehending.

"The Bunker. Sam left the Bunker," Castiel clarifies. "Three months ago. We locked it up, he took the Impala and headed west."

Dean blanches. "What, he just...he just _quit_?"

"He didn't _quit_. He just...it was hard, Dean, being in the Bunker, without you. Sam and I, we were both so focused on finding you, and...well. When we couldn't accomplish that, we—he felt—it seemed it might be more effective to split our efforts. We both...I think we both needed space." He doesn't add how shell-shocked Sam's departure had left him, how lost he'd felt standing outside the Bunker as the Impala receded into the distance, a black gleam on the horizon. "Sam didn't stop hunting, and he didn't stop...looking for you. We just...looked in separate directions."

" _Separate_ —how do you even know he's okay, then?"

"He sends me a message occasionally," says Castiel. "He's hard to contact, Dean. You know that Sam can become...focused." He neglects to mention, here, that Sam's texts and calls had gotten fewer and farther between as the months passed, the words becoming more curt and distant, less and less being exchanged beyond the terse _any news of Dean_ that customarily began, and often ended, any conversation they might have. Castiel hasn't heard from Sam in weeks, now, something that might have worried him if Sam's burgeoning reticence hadn't heralded exactly such a coming silence.

Dean is quiet, processing. Castiel moves to his other arm, winding the bandage from the wrist up, tugging at the edge to make sure it isn't too tight. The first arm is showing more gauze than skin, at this point.

"So...you've been alone?" says Dean at last. "For three months?"

Castiel pauses. "I've been alone before," he says. "I went on some hunts, on my own. I never..." He swallows. "I never stopped looking for you, Dean. I didn't always have hope that I would find you, but I never—"

"I didn't think you would," says Dean. "Find me, I mean." He shrugs, then winces as the movement jostles his arms. "They did...they did a pretty good job of convincing me of that."

His soul sparks slightly as he speaks, a shivering flare of greasy scarlet. Castiel reacts without thinking, his hand jumping to Dean's shoulder even though it isn't Dean's body that needs steadying. Dean tips his head back and squints in the lamplight, eyes intent on Castiel. His lips are slightly parted, and the whole line of his throat with its half-healed gash is exposed.

"Dean, I..." says Castiel, and then falters, arrested as he often is by Dean's nearness.

Dean's lips move, soundless. He might be saying a name.

"...I need to look at that," Castiel says. He reaches careful fingers toward the gash. Something shutters behind Dean's half-lidded eyes; he pulls away from the touch, lurches half-off the bed.

" _I_ need to take a piss," he grumbles, and slouches toward the bathroom door.

"Let me—"

"I do _not_ need you to help me take a piss, Cas!"

Castiel scowls in spite of himself, irritated at Dean's ever-constant stubbornness. Surprisingly, whether rejuvenated by his brief rest or simply through sheer willpower, Dean makes it—somewhat unsteadily—to the bathroom without collapsing. Castiel takes the opportunity to open one of the single-serving cartons of soup, inspect the directions, and place it in the microwave. He punches in what he thinks is the appropriate time with some trepidation; from the bathroom he hears the shower start and hopes Dean has the sense not to get the bandages wet.

It's a while before the soup is heated up, possibly due in part to user error. Castiel has only just removed it from the microwave when the door to the bathroom opens. He turns around with the container in his hands and nearly drops it; Dean is sidling out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist, almost laughably low.

"My clothes were filthy," says Dean diffidently, and _surely_ he is only averting his eyes from the light, and not trying deliberately to look up at Castiel through his lashes.

"I couldn't...find any at the store earlier," says Castiel, barely paying attention to what he's saying. He can't tear his eyes away from Dean, the planes and curves of his body glowing gold at the edges.

Dean moves closer, his presence electric. "Is that for me," he says, almost shyly. "I'm starving."

Castiel looks down at the soup in his hands and it's as if a spell breaks; when he looks up again, his eyes slide past the lamplit angles of Dean's body and land instead on the purple bruises and shiny round scars dotting his torso, the way his hips jut sharply above the towel like mountain peaks, the skin hunger-taut over their steep points. Sorrow burgeons in Castiel's throat; he swallows around it, angry and ashamed on too many levels to count. It isn't enough that he failed Dean, left him to rot in the hands of vampires for six months—he can't even keep his unruly, _decidedly_ unangelic emotions in check even long enough to properly care for his friend.

Dean meets Castiel's gaze and his expression hardens. He looks away, hitching the towel higher with one hand, until the knobs of his hips are obscured.

"Don't," he says. He reaches for the soup with his other hand, across his body so that his chest is shielded by that arm. The motion does little to hide the bruises, or those strange round lesions decorating his chest and stomach.

"Don't what?"

"Don't look at me like that, like I'm some kind of victim."

"You aren't a victim," says Castiel. "You survived. What was done to you was—" He falters, overwhelmed by the atrocity of it all.

Dean scowls at the carpet, pulls his hand back towards him, tight against his chest.

"Is there more water?" he says brusquely.

Castiel points at the shopping bags and watches Dean stomp over to them. He finds himself unsettled by Dean's shifting emotions: hesitant one moment, harsh the next. Timid to angry in the space of a breath. He's used to being able to watch Dean's moods change from far out, like a wave gathering itself on the horizon, growing as it rolls in toward shore. He carries the soup over to the nightstand and takes a long time carefully centering the container.

Dean appears at his side a moment later, so near that the gauze on his arm brushes against Castiel's coat sleeve. Castiel steps back, struck by the irony of their switched roles—normally it's Dean who lectures him about personal space, Dean who moves to open distance between them.

"You should eat," he says to Dean, who doesn't seem to need telling twice.

"They actually fed me pretty well," he says, perching on the edge of the bed with the container in his lap. "Can't drink from a guy if you starve him, I guess."

His hand, halfway to his mouth with the plastic spoon, trembles a little, and Castiel watches droplets of chicken broth splash back into the container.

"How were you burned?" says Castiel carefully, because that's what the lesions look like—strange circular burns, curiously regular in size.

Dean shrugs, his fingers curling into the fabric of the towel, still wrapped around his waist. "Cigarette."

" _Cigarette_ —?"

"Yeah, one of the vamps was a smoker. Blonde fucker. Had a stupid goatee, at least he did last I saw before they—" Dean makes an abortive gesture towards his face, his jaw tightening.

Castiel remembers the vampire in question—a gangly man with long hair and a face set in a perpetual sneer. Castiel had cut his throat as he tried to rise from his place by the campfire.

"I don't think you need to put anything on them," says Dean around a mouthful of noodles. "They aren't infected, I don't think." He shovels more soup into his mouth.

"I'm sorry I can't heal you," says Castiel quietly. He looks down at his hands, fighting back the feeling of helplessness that rises in his chest. "I don't—I don't know why. I don't know what's blocking my grace."

Dean shrugs again. "S'not a big deal. It'll heal the regular way." He drops the container, mostly empty now, back on the nightstand and starts wriggling down under the bedcovers. "I'm so _tired_."

"I can—" Castiel offers, already lifting his hand, but Dean stops him.

"I don't think I need any mojo, Cas. I feel pretty beat."

"The pain, though," says Castiel, because he can see it even now, faint flashes of sharp scarlet blooming in Dean's soul as the agony of his wounds ebbs and flows.

"It's just pain, Cas."

"I didn't realize the extent of your injuries," presses Castiel. "Are you hurt anywhere else? Should I..." He bites down on his lip to stem the tide of his own earnestness. All he has to offer Dean are mediocre first aid skills. He can't take away any of the pain; he can't heal Dean's ravaged eyesight or undo the atrophying of his muscular structure.

Dean rolls onto his side, facing away from Castiel. His soul coils and curls in on itself, like a hurt animal. "Don't worry about it."

"Dean—"

"I'm not a child, Cas," Dean snaps into the pillow. He tugs the covers up to his jaw, hiding the bruises on his throat and back. "Gonna try to sleep a few more hours before the sun gets any higher, alright? Do me a favor and don't _watch_ me, man, it's creepy."

Castiel sighs and retreats to the desk chair by the window. Ignoring Dean's directive, he watches Dean's shoulder rising and falling to the rhythm of his shaky breaths as they ease into the slower cadence of sleep. It occurs to him that some stores might be opening soon; he could leave and purchase clothes for Dean, along with more food. But he thinks of Dean waking up alone again, disoriented and unsure. _I thought I dreamed you_. The sky is lightening, but he doesn't want to leave while Dean sleeps, leave Dean alone to face whatever terrors might haunt his dreams. Deciding he'll get supplies later, he settles into the chair and waits.


	4. Chapter 4

Seated in the chair by the window, Castiel loses track of time. It's something Dean would have mocked him for once: the idea that Castiel could just sit quietly and allow time to pass as he waited for his next mission. He supposes he ought to be racking his brain for answers to the questions he has yet to resolve: why he can't heal Dean, how to contact Sam, when to leave this motel and head for the Bunker, if that's even the best place to go at the moment. It's easier, though, to just allow his thoughts to drift aimlessly. He watches the subtle movement of Dean's body, moving to the rhythm of his breathing, and the way the lamplight casts sharp shadows across the contours of his face. He thinks about the nights he'd allowed himself to confront the chance of never seeing Dean's face again.

Eventually he realizes that the sky through the window behind him is getting darker, not lighter. The air pressure shifts and there's a tingling on his skin, a faint trickle of static making the hairs on his arm stand on end. When he peers through the blinds, he sees that the sky is darkening ominously, with thunderclouds gathering in dense droves on the horizon. The trees on the other side of the parking lot sway violently in a strong wind, heralds of the impending storm.

Right on the heels of the first faint roll of thunder in the distance, Dean begins to shift, his expression contorting while his soul flares and recoils in sudden distress. He twists his head hard to the side, deep into the pillow; his arms, folded in front of him, go rigid as his hands clench into fists.

Castiel rises from his seat and crosses to the side of the bed. On the mattress, Dean tips his head back, exposing his throat and the dark fissure of that half-healed gash. "N—" he chokes, still asleep. "N-no—"

" _Dean_ ," says Castiel urgently, reaching out a hand, but Dean wakes from the nightmare unprompted, his eyes snapping open, a strangled gasp leaving his lips as he starts halfway off the bed.

"I'm right here," says Cas quickly. He reaches out and catches Dean's wrist. Dean twists like a wild animal, blank-eyed and frantic, his soul reeking of fear and pain.

"Dean!" Castiel leans in, using his weight to keep Dean from jackknifing off the bed onto the floor. "It's me!"

"Cas," Dean chokes out, his gaze suddenly coming to rest on Castiel, his expression alight with terror. "You can't be here. Cas, they're going to kill you, you have to go—"

"They're _gone_. I killed the vampires, Dean. _I_ killed them. You're safe."

"No, they won't leave me alone for long, they'll be back, they'll be _hungry_ , they'll find you. Oh, god." Dean lets his chin drop to his chest, his gaze fearful, his free hand tightly fisted into the sheets. At a loss, Castiel sits on the bed and eases Dean slowly back down to horizontal, hoping this will even out his breathing.

"Try to calm down," he urges. "You're safe now."

"They're going to kill you," Dean moans. He shakes his head limply on the pillow. His hand drags free of the sheets and tangles itself in the fabric of Castiel's coat. "Please, Cas, they'll make me watch."

Castiel shivers despite himself, unmoored by the anguish in Dean's voice. He catches Dean's hand, closes his own fingers around it. "I won't leave," he says quietly. "I'm staying. For all the times I left you before, I'm staying."

Dean makes a muffled noise like a sob and screws his eyes shut, turning his head to press his face against the pillow. His breathing remains tense and unsteady, though his hand slowly goes limp in Castiel's grip.

Thunder cracks, much nearer now, and Castiel hears the sudden whispering rush of rain.

"Dean," he says quietly, to the unresponsive man on the bed. "Do you hear that?" Impulsively, he puts his other hand on Dean's forehead, pushing back Dean's sweat-dampened hair. "It's rain. It's rain outside this room—this is a motel room, where I brought you after taking you out of that trailer. You aren't in that place anymore. I found you."

Dean opens his eyes and looks at Castiel, silent, his heartbeat impossibly, _deafeningly_ loud to Castiel's ears. The terror of a few seconds before appears to have ebbed; Dean looks lucid now, fully awake, and he stares up at Castiel with a strange focus. Beyond the circle of lamplight the rest of the room seems to have faded away. But the rain continues to drum against the window and Dean continues to look wordlessly at Castiel.

"You found me," says Dean finally. His voice is a rasp. "In Hell."

"I'm sure it was," says Castiel. "I can't imagine—"

"No," says Dean. "Hell, the real Hell. You pulled me out of the real Hell, too." There's something almost like wonder in his eyes. "I never thanked you."

"You did," Castiel says. "In that barn."

Dean furrows his brow. "I did?"

"Yes. Right before you stabbed me."

"Oh. I was probably being sarcastic, at the time."

Castiel conjures up the memory of that younger Dean, angrier and yet somehow softer, less ravaged by the world. The insolent lilt of his voice right before he'd plunged a knife into Castiel's chest. "I don't think I picked up on that. At the time."

"Makes sense," Dean whispers. "Given the huge stick up your ass."

Castiel laughs softly in spite of himself. "I suppose I've changed a lot since then."

"In some ways." Dean lowers his eyes. "Still just as much of a badass."

Castiel is still leaning down over Dean, and he is suddenly aware of how close they are: he can count the lashes through which Dean is peering up at him, pinpoint the few faded freckles that remain scattered across Dean's cheekbones. Dean's pulse spikes and Castiel can hear the burgeoning staccato of it, can sense Dean's soul unfurling cobalt-blue, a swell of color that even the strange muting force between them can't completely hide. Their clasped hands hover in the air, six inches over Dean's bare chest.

Something brushes against his leg and he realizes that Dean's other hand, resting on the bed, is pressed against Castiel's knee where his leg is folded on the mattress. Dean wets his lower lip, almost unconsciously, and the surge of desire that wells up from his soul is unmistakable.

Castiel jerks back, tearing his eyes from Dean's mouth, sickened with himself for using Dean like this. Because after six months in captivity, of course Dean is going to have...needs, and Dean is vulnerable, now, half out of his mind with pain and trauma, desperate for touch, for contact, and what is Castiel doing, taking advantage of that, what is he _thinking_ —

"Dean," he stammers, pulling back to the edge of the bed. He drops Dean's hand as if burned by it, hating the way he immediately misses the feel of Dean's skin. "I—"

"Cas," Dean breathes. His soul is a jumble of emotions, hunger and pain and fear and _want_ , and Castiel can't begin to untangle it, nor does he trust himself to try. Dean sits up slowly, leaning forward. There's a moment when he pauses and winces, one hand jumping to his ribs where an ugly, apple-sized bruise purples the skin. Castiel digs his fingers into his own thighs, the pinpoints of pressure a welcome distraction.

"I'm sorry I can't heal you," he blurts again. Dean's arms are swathed in gauze; his skin is broken and bloody in so many places. His body is a map of Castiel's failure to protect him.

"Cas—"

Castiel slips off the bed and stands, opening up space between them, distance and air to separate his unruly vessel from the white-hot nearness of Dean.

"I should get more supplies," he hears himself saying. His voice sounds brittle to his ears, shaky. As if it might crumble at any moment, leaving him with nothing except how much he wants to plunge forward and pin Dean to the mattress beneath him, cover the marks on Dean's body with new ones, adoration instead of violence. "And clothes for you."

Dean's expression is an odd mixture of frustration and hurt. "It's fucking pouring."

"I'll be alright. I've driven in rain."

There's a long, fraught silence, and then Dean mutters something that sounds like a curse, followed by something about using the bathroom. He scoots off the bed, making for the side opposite Castiel even though it's farther, one hand holding the towel tightly around his waist. Castiel watches him go, watches the fluorescent bathroom lights flick on before the door swings closed, a physical barrier between him and Dean, one he finds himself grateful for at the moment. He feels in his pocket for the car keys.

Then, without any thunder or fanfare, just the continued torrential hammering of the rain, the power goes out.

Castiel blinks, taken by surprise. The only illumination is now the faint pearly light that filters in through the blinds, though he would be able to see perfectly well even without it. He isn't sure what normal human protocol for a power outage is. In any case, he doesn't have much of a chance to react before there's a gasp and a set of muffled thuds from the bathroom.

He pivots and sprints the scant distance to the bathroom door, not even knocking in his haste. Inside, it's pitch dark, and Dean is doubled over on the tile floor, the towel tangled around his ankles, his breathing loud and panicky.

"Dean!" Castiel snaps in alarm, just as Dean presses his hands over his eyes and all but screams Castiel's name.

Castiel forgets the bruises on Dean's skin, forgets the string of his failures, forgets everything but the strangled sound of Dean's voice. He lunges forward and drops to his knees beside Dean. Puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, a hand on Dean's cheek. Tightens his grip, almost shaking Dean with it.

Dean is babbling incoherently. "Cas, please, I can't—" His voice breaks. "It's—it's dark—they—I can't see, _I can't see_ —"

"I'm right here," Castiel says urgently. Dean turns toward him, head tipping frantically in the direction of Castiel's voice. "I'm _right here_ , Dean, listen to me."

"Get me out," Dean gasps. His arms have found their way around Castiel's neck somehow; Dean's face is buried in his collarbone. "Please, Cas, get me out  _please_ —"

"Alright," soothes Castiel. It's awkward maneuvering from a kneeling position, but he gets his arms under Dean's shoulders and knees, lifting smoothly as he stands.

"Don't stop talking," Dean whispers.

"Just breathe."

Castiel steps carefully out of the bathroom, moving through the darkness to the bed. He stoops to lower Dean to the mattress and realizes that the towel is very much absent in this exchange. He tenses immediately, his arms locking up as he realizes how much of Dean's bare skin is pressed against him.

Dean makes a small, hiccupping noise, and any fire that had sparked under Castiel's skin dies out instantly. He can't imagine anything less sexual than this situation.

"I've got you," he says. Dean clutches at him as Castiel sets him down on the bed. "It's alright, Dean, I've got you, it's alright." He keeps murmuring, the words blending together into ceaseless susurration, as he shrugs out of his coat, then his jacket. The jacket, he realizes belatedly, isn't going to fit, and is too short to do much good in any case. So he slips Dean's arms through the trenchcoat sleeves, first one and then the other, sliding a palm between Dean's shoulder blades to lift them off the bed, speaking quietly all the while.

Dean rolls onto his side and clutches the coat around him as if it's a life preserver. Even skinny as he is, his shoulders are still too broad for it and Castiel can hear the creaky, whispery sound of the fabric straining against his back.

"You're here," Dean mutters.

"I'm here," Castiel assures him. "You're safe. I'm here."

"Cas, I—I can't see."

"There's light coming from the window."

"I can't see it."

Castiel frowns, unsure if it's truly that the light is too faint for Dean's damaged eyes, or if he's simply blinded by panic. He sits down beside where Dean is curled on top of the blankets, and slips a hand under Dean's cheek, tipping his face back towards the window.

"There's light even in the storm, Dean," Castiel says. "You can see it, and you can hear the rain."

Thunder rumbles, as if on cue.

"You're not there," Castiel adds, gently.

Dean shudders. His soul is a miserable, fluttering thing like a wounded bird.

"Dean, please. Talk to me."

Another long moment passes. Then Dean says quietly, "I almost got away, once."

Castiel doesn't say anything. Dean's cheek still rests on his palm, Dean's weight pressing down on his fingers.

"Dunno where we were. It was a couple months in and they got careless. They were keeping me tied up—I slipped the ropes and made it half a mile down the road before they..." He stops, grimaces, his features semi-indistinct in the dark. "That's when they started chaining me instead, and they...they..." He gestures at his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Dean." Castiel pictures Dean fighting, desperate and outnumbered. Pictures the vampires holding Dean down, pouring epoxy over his eyes. Rage ignites anew inside him.

"They would leave me alone for hours. I'd be—" Another full-body shudder wracks him. "I couldn't hear or see. I'd never know if they were there, watching, unless they—unless they—"

"Unless they tortured you," says Castiel. The anger hisses, foams, a flame licking at his insides.

"Or fed," says Dean. "Sometimes I could feel the trailer moving, and I'd know we were driving somewhere new. But mostly it was just dark and...and silent. There was never..." He takes a shaky breath. "There was never any warning. I could never prepare."

"I don't know how you survived," says Castiel softly.

Dean makes a sound too strangled to be a real laugh. "They were careful, man. They never took too much, they never hurt me in any way that could kill me. They told me. Told me I." He falters. "Told me they'd keep me alive for years, to feed on."

"They weren't careful here," Castiel says softly, reaching up with his free hand to brush against the jagged gash in Dean's throat.

"That was me," says Dean, and Castiel goes still as the import of that comes crashing down on him.

"They were drinking in the trailer," says Dean. Castiel can't speak. "Broke a bottle a little too close to me, I grabbed a—a piece. Tried. Um. I tried to."

"Dean," Castiel manages at last, and maybe the word conveys everything crowding his traitorous mouth. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You almost died. I let them take you. I almost lost you._

"I thought you wouldn't come for me," says Dean, his voice cracking. "Figured you thought I was dead, by then."

"We didn't give up on you," says Castiel. "I was afraid—that you _were_ —but I never—"

"I prayed to you," Dean blurts. Something warm and wet touches Castiel's hand where it rests between Dean's face and the bed, and he realizes that Dean is crying silently, hot tears that go rolling sideways across his face to land on Castiel's palm. "I prayed to you so many times, Cas, and you never—and I thought that maybe you just—that you—"

Castiel drops onto his side on the bed, mirroring Dean's posture, and pulls Dean into him.

"I didn't hear them," he says into Dean's hair. "I didn't hear any of them, Dean, I swear to you. Nothing got through to me, I don't know why. I'm so, so sorry."

Dean is tense in Castiel's arms for a long moment before his soul opens up and he melts like snow, collapsing into the curves of Castiel's body as if he belongs there.

"I searched for you for six months," says Castiel quietly. "I never believed you were dead. Sam and I never stopped looking."

Dean buries his face in Castiel's chest.

"I'm so sorry it took this long. But please believe me, Dean, I never would have stopped looking, either. I would have searched for you for as long as it took." Careful not to jostle Dean's many injuries, he shifts his grip so that he can cup the back of Dean's head with one hand. He rests the other hand on Dean's shoulder, where his mark once lay. It's strange to feel the fabric of his own coat beneath his hands, stranger still to know that the warmth underneath the garment is Dean. He realizes that Dean is whispering softly, and strains to catch the faint words.

"I'm sorry," Dean is whispering, over and over again, the words muffled by the fabric of Castiel's shirt. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"Stop apologizing. What do you have to be sorry for?"

"Giving up," Dean says, anguished. "Being—god, being weak, Cas, I was so—"

"Dean Winchester," says Castiel. "You and your brother are the strongest men I have ever known."

"Sam maybe," Dean mutters. "I'm not—god, Cas, I wish I could tell you I never begged."

"I don't care what you did while they had you. I care that you survived. That's what required strength, and _that's_ what I'm grateful for. Can't you see that?"

"Cas—" Dean pulls back a little, shifting to look up at Castiel. Abruptly he curls in on himself with a gasp, clutching at his bandaged forearm. "Fuck."

"You have to be careful," Castiel chides.

"I hate this," Dean says through gritted teeth. "I hate that you're seeing me like this. God, you must think I'm—"

"Stop," says Castiel. He can't bear the fount of self-loathing he can already sense brimming on Dean's tongue. "Don't you dare imply that my regard for you has lessened in _any_ way."

"You had to _carry_ me out of that nest, Cas."

"Accepting help isn't a sign of weakness."

Dean snorts bitterly. "We'll see what you think a month from now when you still have to carry my crippled ass everywhere."

"That won't happen. I'll find a way to heal you, Dean, I promise."

Dean shivers. "Cas..." He tips his face up in the darkness.

Abruptly the lights flicker back on. Castiel gets a brief glimpse of Dean's upturned face by lamplight, streaked with tears, eyes reddened, a beautiful flush darkening his cheeks as his gaze flits up to meet Castiel's. Then Dean quickly pulls away and rolls over, his back suddenly to Castiel and his fingers flying to the edges of the trenchcoat, pulling it more securely around himself, hiding the scars on his torso.

Castiel starts to avert his eyes but finds them snagging on Dean's bare legs, the way the trenchcoat is rucked over the sharp angle of Dean's right hip. Dean is propping himself on one elbow now, still half-turned away from Castiel as he pulls the hem of the coat down to cover—

"Stop!" Castiel lunges, bolting upright and reaching around Dean to seize his wrist.

Dean freezes, the faint echoes of his soul becoming even fainter, curling inwards. "Buy a guy dinner first, Cas," he quips half-heartedly. He doesn't turn around, even though Castiel is so close behind that he can feel the warmth emanating from Dean's body.

Castiel ignores this feeble smokescreen of humor in favor of pulling Dean's wrist back, out of the way. He grabs Dean's knee and pushes it to the side, forcing Dean's legs to open. The coat, fortunately, continues to cover everything that human propriety would demand stay covered, but not what Dean was trying to hide: two shapes carved into the planes of his inner thighs, large and symmetrical and unmistakably sigils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of a longer update this week! Thanks everyone for being so patient. I hope you guys like it, and as always comments are super appreciated. <3


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel lets go of Dean, shock whiting out his thoughts for an instant. Dean takes advantage of the lapse to twist away. He crouches on the bed and pulls the coat down over his thighs, facing Castiel with his jaw knotted defiantly.

"Those are sigils," Castiel says slowly.

"Yeah? Thanks, Sherlock, I fucking noticed."

"Who did that to you?"

"One of the vampires. It doesn't matter. It's done already."

"How would a vampire—"

"I said it doesn't _matter_ , Castiel!" Dean snaps.

It's the use of his full name, almost as much as the tone, which causes Castiel to stop mid-question. He considers Dean, curled like a wild creature on the bedcovers, his fingers gripping the fabric of Castiel's coat so tightly that the knuckles have turned white.

"Why didn't you tell me?" says Castiel slowly.

"What was the point?" Dean says flippantly. "Not like you can heal me."

Castiel flinches inwardly at the reminder, but irritation flares unexpectedly, eclipsing his guilt for once. He is good for more than healing. He is not just a reservoir of grace to Dean. "Dean, why didn't you _tell_ me?"

" _Because it's just another thing wrong with me_ ," Dean hisses, fury dilating his pupils.

"Dean—"

"I can barely _see_ , Cas. I'm half-blind and half-deaf and I can barely fucking walk and everything _hurts_ , my arms feel like they're on fire and it hurts to breathe and I don't need you to look at me like you're sorry for me, alright? I don't need you to feel bad that you didn't save my sorry ass in time to keep a bunch of vamps from carving it up!"

Castiel doesn't mean to snap, but he's just so _frustrated_ with all of this, with Dean's stubbornness and pride and self-loathing, with his own inability to fix this situation, with Sam's enduring silence. He is tired of having to pry every scrap of information out of Dean like it's a confession, tired of having to force every gesture of aid or comfort into Dean's clenched fists as if it's a burden. He is tired of not being to help not because he can't but because Dean won't _let_ him.

He moves before he's realized what he's doing, leans forward and twists one hand into the fabric of Dean's coat—of _his_ coat—and drags Dean across the bed towards him. Dean goes, with a muffled gasp, his hands flying out to brace against the mattress so that he doesn't fall directly into Castiel's lap.

"There is _nothing_ wrong with you," Castiel growls.

It's Dean's turn to stutter. "Cas—"

"And did you ever consider that maybe the sigils are the _reason why I can't heal you_?"

"They aren't," Dean falters, but he sounds uncertain. His face, upturned, is inches from Castiel's own.

"How would you know?"

"He—they said."

"Said _what_?"

"The sigils are to keep me alive. They're keeping me alive. So that I can't—so that I couldn't—"

"Dean. Focus. What did they say?"

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. "To hide me, and keep me from dying. So that—so that they'll never lose me. They'll keep me forever. To drink from, forever." His mouth trembles and he presses his lips together, a narrow line.

Castiel loosens his grip on the coat, but Dean stays where he is, on his hands and knees with his head tipped up, his mouth _so_ very near that it takes everything in Castiel not to close that gap.

"Let me see," he says, very quietly.

Dean opens his eyes, and his pulse is suddenly deafeningly loud, speeding up like a train gaining momentum.

"I won't touch them," Castiel says. "Just let me see them. I can read them and we'll figure out what they are."

"Cas—"

"I need you to trust me, Dean."

Dean stares up at Castiel and then slowly sits back on his heels, before tucking his toes under and shifting into a cross-legged position. He starts smoothing down the trenchcoat hem, his eyes fixed determinedly downward. His hands are shaking, but after a long minute he finally rucks the fabric up over his lap to uncover the sigils again.

Castiel clenches his fists. The sigils didn't need to be so large, and they didn't need to be on Dean's inner thighs, either, where the skin is soft and sensitive. Someone had wanted this to hurt.

He sees, too, that the sigils have been carved more than once; in parts the lines are ragged where the knife varied slightly in retracing the pattern.

"Get on with it," Dean mumbles, and Castiel, glancing up, sees that Dean's head is angled away and his cheeks are flushed dark. Castiel berates himself silently for taking longer than he needs; it's clear how uncomfortable this is making Dean, how reluctant he is to be this exposed to Castiel, to have Castiel so near.

Examining the sigils with renewed vigor, he still fails to recognize them. The symbols winding through the patterns, however, are ancient Greek, easy enough to read.

"One is to hide you from prying eyes and those who would search for you," says Castiel. That could be why none of the tracking spells had worked, he thinks. No matter how desperately he and Sam had sought those spells, how dangerous the witches and psychics they had tracked down to bargain with. A thread of unease pricks at him, as he wonders which of the vampires he'd killed had the knowledge to carve these, and from where that knowledge might have been gained.

"Told you that already," Dean says.

"The other," says Castiel, praying for patience in dealing with mortals, "is to..." he frowns at the lettering, dark against the pale of Dean's sun-starved skin, "to 'keep you poised', to not permit your body to pass through...gates?"

"Gates," Dean repeats.

"It's not a direct translation," says Castiel crossly.

"Well, it's a mystery." Dean draws his knees together. "We done?"

"You said they told you the sigils would keep you from dying. So maybe this one... _oh_. Of course."

"What?"

"Your wounds," says Castiel. "They weren't cleaned or treated."

Dean snorts. "Course not. They didn't give a shit."

"Some of them were infected, you should have been going into septic shock. You're malnourished, they were draining your blood regularly, but your organs haven't failed. When you—when you cut your throat, you didn't bleed out. The sigil is not permitting your body to pass through into another state. Death. It's keeping your wounds from killing you."

"Great. S'not keeping them from hurting, that's for fucking sure."

"No, don't you see?" says Castiel, impatient. "It's working both ways. It won't let your body pass into a healed state, either. None of your injuries are fully healed, even the ones that should be by now. And it must be blocking my grace."

Dean inhales sharply, and looks at Castiel for the first time since uncovering the sigils. "So then—"

"We have to destroy these," says Castiel. He extends his hand, feels the cool impact of his blade hitting his palm. Dean goes tense, eyes darting to the weapon.

Castiel hesitates. The last thing he wants to do is injure Dean further, even if it's the most expedient method of healing him. "Or we could wait for them to heal," he offers. "These would become less effective the less fresh they are, so I'm guessing the vampires had to redo them."

Dean nods jerkily. "A couple of times."

Castiel suspects it was quite a few more than a couple, but he just says, "Destroying them now would be—"

"Faster," says Dean. He nods again, clenching his jaw. "Let's do it now."

Castiel flips the blade around in his hand and offers it to Dean, haft-first. "One line should do it. To break the pattern."

Dean stares at the blade, swallows convulsively, takes it. He holds it for a moment, his expression strained. "I want—" he says, and stops.

"Dean?"

"I want you to do it."

Now it's Castiel's turn to stare at the blade. "Dean, I—"

"Cas, please." Dean holds out the blade. "I can't—I don't want to do it. Please."

It's the second _please_ that does it, the catch in Dean's voice that has Castiel numbly taking his weapon back and gripping it tightly as Dean opens his knees again, clenching his hands in his lap, over the coat.

Castiel shifts his weight forward, putting his free hand on Dean's knee to brace himself. Dean's breathing is already getting panicked—shaky inhales and exhales, his fists shaking visibly with the effort of not moving. When Castiel moves the blade towards the second sigil, the one blocking his healing, a tiny, involuntary sound of terror escapes Dean's lips.

"Dean," says Castiel. It occurs to him that this is probably exactly how the sigils were carved in the first place—Dean open and vulnerable under the knifepoint, someone leaning over him, digging a blade into his skin. "We don't have to do this."

"Sorry," says Dean. "Sorry, I—sorry." He takes a large, shuddering breath. His lashes are wet. "Just do it fast, okay? Do both of them."

Castiel nods and readjusts his grip on the blade. Dean's skin dents gently beneath the point of the weapon, only a slight margin of pressure keeping it from breaking. He takes one last careful breath, and—

"No, stop, stop, I can't," Dean blurts, pulling away. He hunches over and presses his hands over his eyes. "Fuck."

Even without being able to fully sense Dean's soul, Castiel feels overwhelmed by the distress rolling off Dean in waves. He moves without really thinking about it, switches the blade from his right hand to his left and reaches out to grip Dean's shoulder.

Dean relaxes with a gasp, leaning into the point of contact, his chin dropping to his chest.

Castiel lifts the angel blade again, holding it out towards Dean. "Put your hand on mine."

Dean complies, reaching out to rest his fingers against where Castiel's are curled around the blade's handle. His other hand slips almost unconsciously toward his shoulder, fingers curling into the cuff of Castiel's shirtsleeve.

"It's going to be alright, Dean," says Castiel. "I need you to trust me."

Dean nods. He meets Castiel's eyes. Nods again.

"You could close your eyes, if that helps."

"No," says Dean immediately. "It was worse when I couldn't see it."

"I'll do it quickly," Castiel promises. He moves the blade back to where the sigil is, and this time Dean's hand goes with it, fingertips poised lightly against Castiel's wrist. Castiel steadies himself for a moment—his vessel is right-handed and that was the side he had chosen to favor when he first inhabited it, but it doesn't really matter for this—and then he makes two very fast, very deliberate cuts, one through each sigil, letting the arc of the first stroke carry him into the second to give Dean less time to react.

He does it well—the incisions are shallow, but each one bisects the entirety of the sigil, and his hand blurs with the speed of the motion, so that by the time Dean hisses and flinches it's already done. And then Castiel is tossing the blade off the side of the bed and grabbing Dean's other shoulder, and that's as far as he gets before Dean's soul explodes into view in front of him.

Castiel gasps. He can't help it. The surge of light and sound and _presence_ is almost overwhelming after six months of having Dean's soul barred from him. He'd thought he had the measure of how keenly he'd felt its absence. He'd been wrong. It's only now, sensing Dean's soul fully again, that he understands the chasm the _want_ of it had left in him. Dean's soul reverberates like a struck bell, half-obscured by a patina of pain and fear but radiant nonetheless, as bright as it was the day Castiel first saw it, burning like a star in Hell's caverns. Castiel catches his breath and wonders at how it could ever have been hidden from him.

"Cas?" Dean is staring at him, wide-eyed. "Did it work? Did it—"

Castiel moves his hand to Dean's cheek and pours his grace in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter, everyone! I've been trying to stick with a two week schedule but life has been hectic as anything lately and so I had to let an extra week slip by.
> 
> I was originally planning on having this chapter cover more ground, but the sigil-breaking scene ended up needing more space to breathe and develop, so I decided to let it have its own chapter to itself. More angst and h/c next update, as always.
> 
> And thank you everyone for your wonderful comments, especially the people who've been commenting on multiple chapters, it's really encouraging! <3 you guys give me life!


	6. Chapter 6

Castiel heals everything, all of it: the sigils, the bruises, the cigarette burns, the arm wounds, the raw sore festering on the inside of Dean's cheek where he must have bitten down hard during some torment. He heals the lacerations on Dean's wrists and cleanses the infection no longer held at bay by the sigils. He restores Dean's damaged eyes and internal organs, rebuilds the eroded muscle tissue, wipes away the gash across Dean's throat so that not even the scar remains.

With a gasp, Dean goes limp, lolling bonelessly in Castiel's arms as the pain drains out of him. Castiel realizes, with a stab of mingled wonder and alarm, that he can _feel_ the pain leaving Dean—can feel Dean's soul and body crying out in relief as the months-long agony dissipates at last. Without the sigil to obscure Dean's soul from him, its movements and contours are laid out for him, as familiar as his own grace.

Dean lifts his head. "Cas," he slurs, sounding almost drunk for an instant before his gaze suddenly sharpens. "I can _see_ you," he breathes.

Castiel has almost always, in general, avoided looking too deeply into Dean's soul. When he'd first met Dean, he'd shown no such courtesy, but eventually he'd come to understand that tuning into Dean's mind to such an extent wasn't something that would be considered appropriate by human standards. Despite how carelessly humans tended to broadcast their feelings and thoughts. And it had become clear that even Dean, who always wore his emotions recklessly on his sleeve, like banners flown into battle, was nevertheless uncomfortable with it on the few occasions that he realized or suspected what was happening. So Castiel had quickly learned to restrict himself to picking up only Dean's surface emotions, the strong ones that swept across his mind like waves on the sea.

With Dean's soul blocked, he hadn't needed to hold back his awareness or worry about skirting the currents of Dean's soul. There was no danger of accidentally perceiving any of Dean's thoughts or reactions—the sigil blocked almost everything, letting only brief blips of the very strongest emotions out.

With it destroyed, there is nothing now veiling the desire that surges under Dean's gaze.

***

"I don't see why we have to go right now," Dean grouses.

"The rain has stopped," Castiel says patiently. "You need food. And clothes." He continues looking resolutely towards the corner of the room, keeping Dean barely in his peripheral vision.

The fierce blue pulse of Dean's _want_ , thrumming from his soul with the intensity of a drumbeat, had startled Castiel almost as much as it had unnerved him. After that first frozen instant, he'd managed to yank back his awareness. He restricted it in the way that he customarily did, so that he was only receiving what Dean was broadcasting most loudly, although a faint flicker of cobalt still shimmered through here and there.

Now Dean is standing in the middle of the room, arms above his head, _stretching_.

He'd at least retrieved the towel from the bathroom, wrapping it more securely around his waist, and he's still wearing Castiel's coat, but it hangs open in front and nothing is hiding the now-unmarked skin of Dean's chest and stomach. Castiel doesn't trust himself to look. He hadn't known what to make of Dean's desire, other than to surmise that after so long in captivity Dean's sexual urges had to be at the forefront of his mind, in the way that the other physical requirements of the human body—food, water, rest, oxygen—clamored loudly to be satisfied once too much time had passed. He'd been even less ready for the answering rush of his _own_ desire, which had reared up inside him, a response so immediate as to feel almost instinctual, even though such a thing couldn't— _shouldn't_ , should _never_ be—instinctual for his kind.

Anger at his own weakness—because it wasn't _Castiel_ that Dean wanted, of course, it never was, and for Castiel to feel desire in this moment was just as foolish as every other moment of longing in which he'd indulged in the past—is what had led him to recoil, letting Dean fall heavily back onto the mattress, his head narrowly missing the headboard. Castiel had barely noticed in his haste to get off the bed, to get away from the almost irresistible pull of Dean's gravity, the dangerous throb of that dark blue undertow.

Dean had acted like nothing had happened, though his soul had shuttered like a lantern, mercifully submerging the torrent of its hungers. Now he stands and leans from side to side, flexing his limbs and pulling the last of the bandages off his unblemished torso, rolling the coat sleeves up to stare at his arms. And it _is_ startling, the contrast—he seems to glow, almost, in the soft lamplight, free of injury at last, standing straight and lithe again instead of hunched over with pain. In spite of himself Castiel feels his gaze sliding back towards Dean's lamplit frame, and he curls his hands discreetly into fists as he tries to pretend the inspection is clinical. The wounds have all closed over without even scars in their wake, and the contours of Dean's hips, thankfully covered by the towel at this point, are no longer sharp with malnutrition. Dean's muscles, filled out to their former state, strain against the sleeves of Castiel's coat, and when he runs his own hands wonderingly over his chest and belly, the movement is so steady and smooth that to Castiel it seems almost obscene. He averts his eyes and tries to remember where the car keys ended up.

"Stores will certainly be open by now," he says, finally spotting the keys on the floor where they must have fallen out of his coat pocket. "And the storm has passed. You need clothes. And food. Unless you want to keep eating soup."

"Yeah, but what's the rush?" says Dean, still focused on his own body rather than on Castiel.

"The sooner we get supplies the sooner we can move. The weather is good enough to make the drive back to—" Castiel hesitates.

Dean does turn to look at him, now. "Back to the Bunker."

The Bunker, closed and dark. The Bunker, empty, where Sam's absence will be unavoidable.

"Yes," says Castiel, and then hears himself add, "Eventually. We don't need to leave town right away." He had, in fact, been thinking that they could make the drive today. But now he looks at Dean's face and feels his own dread at the thought of the dusty corridors, and thinks to himself that maybe if they wait another day or two he can get hold of Sam, somehow. It's not the Bunker Dean needs most right now, it's his brother.

"Sounds good," Dean says immediately. "Bunker's not going anywhere. And I'm weirdly beat considering you just healed me."

"Your body required repairs on a massive scale," Castiel says bluntly. Dean blinks and curls his fingers around his own arms as if to reassure himself that they're intact. "My grace provided most of the power required, but in-depth muscle repair, cleansing infected tissue—those things drew from your own energy reserves as well. You need rest and food. So we should still make the supply run, at least."

He starts for the door.

"Wait," blurts Dean. Castiel turns, his hand on the knob. Dean still hasn't moved.

"What?"

Dean hesitates. "I don't..." He stops. His gaze darts to the door, and he takes a slow step, then falters.

"Don't what?" Castiel has the frustratingly familiar sense that he isn't doing what Dean wants, that he's messing up, somehow, but he has no idea what exactly the failure is. Only a few minutes ago, with the storm raging outside and his arms around Dean, it felt as though he knew exactly what to say to meet Dean's needs, and now he's floundering again, unsure what to say or do. At least he recognizes the pattern, anyway—this disjointed rhythm of alternating understanding and bewilderment that seems to govern all his interactions with Dean.

"I can't go out like this, man." Dean gestures down at himself. "I don't have pants. For starters."

It makes sense, now that Castiel remembers to account for yet one more of the myriad human norms that he'll never be able to keep track of, but it doesn't feel like the reason Dean was originally going to give, and underneath the words Dean's soul is fluttering restlessly, curling and folding in on itself as if to hide.

Castiel tilts his head. It's obvious that Dean isn't thrilled with the idea of Castiel going to the store, but the _why_ isn't clear. Castiel considers and discards several theories in quick succession—maybe Dean _does_ want to keep eating soup, maybe Dean likes wearing just the towel?—and finally decides that if Dean isn't going to give a more concrete protest, it's more important to make the supply run while the weather holds.

"I'll be quick," he tells Dean, opening the door. "Try to get some sleep."

A spasm of some unidentifiable emotion crosses Dean's face for an instant—hurt, or frustration, or fear. It isn't until Castiel is sliding into the driver's seat of his truck that he realizes it could have been anger, too.

***

Castiel hadn't seen any reason to mention this to Dean, but the healing has drained him as well—he's exhausted as he pulls out of the parking lot under the still-overcast sky, his head pounding. His wings, tucked away in the etheric plane, ache sharply, even more so than usual.

He pushes away the tired haze that fills his mind like a wad of fluffy cotton and forces himself to dial a handful of Sam's numbers on the way to the store, leaving messages whenever there's a voicemail set up. Nobody picks up on any of the calls, which doesn't surprise him so much as it simply contributes to his general feeling of weariness.

Castiel reasons to himself that the more environmental factors he can make familiar, the more normal Dean will feel. So he picks out clothes as close to Dean's normal attire as he can find, and even though he's purchased a few frozen meals he also stops by a drive-thru and gets a cheeseburger and fries. When he steps back over the threshold of the motel room with the greasy paper bag tucked into the crook of his arm, the space is immediately filled with the smell of hot food and cooking oil.

Dean is asleep on the bed, underneath the covers for once. The lamp has been switched off, which surprises Castiel, but he supposes that the hazy light—for it's now well-past noon—filtering through the window blinds is sufficient to allay Dean's fears of the dark. He sets all the bags down on the table and has to grip the edge for a moment to steady himself as a wave of fatigue rolls over him. He grits his teeth against the throbbing pain in his temples and fights the overwhelming desire to lie down.

Castiel glances over at the bed. Dean has tucked himself securely in by the very edge, and Castiel suddenly wants desperately to slide under the covers on the other side—not to _sleep_ , of course, he's only slept when human, or when running on absolute dregs of power—but just to rest, to be still and know that Dean is safe, healed, an arm's length away.

Before he can stop himself, he's doing exactly that, slipping out of his shoes and into the bed, holding himself rigidly at the very edge to maintain the crucial few feet of space between himself and Dean. It seems a little absurd given that a few hours ago he was quite literally holding Dean in his arms, but he is equally sure that Dean would consider those circumstances a one-time exception to his immutable rules on personal space. Castiel shifts on the mattress, trying to get into a natural position while taking up as little space as possible. He's worried about shaking the bed in his attempts, but Dean is deeply asleep, his heartbeat slow and even. He is still wearing the trenchcoat, his head turned to the side so that his face is half-buried in its upturned collar. After a moment Castiel relaxes as well, lulled by the steady pulse of Dean's soul, all the more comforting after the time he's spent unable to sense it.

Maybe he lets himself be lulled too deeply, or maybe it's just the draw of Dean's soul, pulling at him, all but magnetic after so many months. In either case, when it abruptly flares and shudders, broadcasting a crimson-and-grey pulse of fear, Castiel doesn't even have a chance to consider whether he should just _wake_ Dean with a tap on the forehead—he tumbles into Dean's mind as if in hard-coded response, slipping across the gap between them and into the space of Dean's nightmare. It happens so fast that, on the bed, Dean's sleeping features have barely begun to twist in distress before Castiel finds himself standing on the doorstep of the derelict trailer where he'd found Dean the previous night.

Castiel is so disoriented that he almost loses his footing, stumbling a little as his mind adjusts to its sudden jaunt into the dream space. This has never happened before— _would_ never have happened before, back when his disciplined maintenance of the distance between himself and Dean was almost airtight, when the years of constant restraint had made it second nature to hold back from Dean's soul. His entering of Dean's mind a few moments ago wasn't a conscious reaction, just a knee-jerk answer to Dean's sudden pain, and that shouldn't have happened, Castiel shouldn't have _allowed_ that to happen—but he doesn't have time to dwell on it or be troubled by his slip. On the floor in front of him, Dean is pinned down by three vampires, and he is fighting.

Two of the vampires have him pinned on his back while the third straddles him, holding him in place by virtue of sheer weight, but Dean continues to wrench against his captors' grips with dogged determination. His face is streaked with dirt and blood; it looks like there might be grit embedded in his cheek.

"De—" Castiel starts to try to say, but like a stretched rubber band suddenly snapping back into place, the trailer jolts away from him, shrinking into the distance. Other cars blink into existence, populating the space between, until he finds himself standing on the other side of the vampires' camp, suddenly vast and crammed with vehicles, as if the nightmare is conspiring to keep him from reaching Dean. And yet somehow he is still _in_ the trailer—he is _with_ Dean, experiencing the nightmare _as_ Dean. He is looking out of Dean's eyes at the smirk of the vampire on top of him, feeling the sharp ache of bruises blooming on his ribs, where the vampires had kicked him into submission—the memory blips through the dream like a flashback—earlier, on the deserted road half a mile from the camp, when they had caught up with him. He'd tried to run and they'd found him. They'd found him so _quickly_.

Castiel runs; Dean struggles. Castiel is dodging around derelict vehicles and simultaneously straining against the hands that keep him spread helplessly on the linoleum.

"You've been bad, Dean," says the vampire straddling Dean. He shakes dark hair out of his face and grins. "I thought we had established a sense of mutual trust. What's more, you've been _stupid_. I told you the sigils would make it impossible for you to hide."

"Go to hell," spits Dean. Castiel can taste blood on the roof of his mouth. Dean is afraid—his terror suffuses the trailer in a dense fog, and he is fighting to keep it from showing on his face.

The dark-haired vampire leans in and backhands Dean almost casually. "I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart. And neither are you."

The vampire, gloating, has leaned too close; Dean manages to snap his head sharply off the floor, slamming his forehead into his aggressor's nose. The other man reels back with a curse and Castiel feels Dean's grim satisfaction.

"You little fuck," the vampire says, and suddenly his hand is around Dean's throat, squeezing; Dean chokes and Castiel chokes too, stumbling mid-run as stars of light explode in their shared vision.

"Listen very carefully," says the vampire. "We. Own. Your ass. You don't fucking _breathe_ without our permission."

Dean is certainly not breathing now, his mouth gaping desperately as he tries in vain to pull air into his lungs. The other two vampires crouch lower and pain explodes in both of Castiel's arms simultaneously as two sets of phantom teeth sink into the meat of Dean's arms. He scrambles over a gutted pickup blocking his path and at the same time he is on the floor with Dean, arching his back and fighting for enough air to scream.

"You understand, Dean?" The dark-haired vampire's voice purrs out of the agony and the encroaching darkness, echoing in Dean's oxygen-deprived brain. "You go where we put you and you _stay_. You walk out a door again, we'll find you and we'll cut all the skin off your arms and lick your blood straight off the muscle."

Castiel can see the trailer now. He focuses on it grimly, refusing to let it stretch away from him into the middle distance again. Inside, he draws a shuddering breath with Dean as the vampire at last releases his hold.

"I said, do you _understand_."

Dean coughs and nods and sucks in more air, tears squeezing out of his eyes as he struggles to inhale through a half-crushed windpipe. The vampire runs a hand down Dean's bleeding cheek and says, almost gently, "We're going to keep you forever, Dean. No more running, alright? Just focus on keeping that sweet blood of yours pumping. You'll last us decades."

"No," Dean rasps.

"It's not up to you, sweetheart. You leave, we'll just find you, bring you back, and cut some of your parts off. But just in case, let's see how eager you are to escape when you can't see where you're going."

The vampire leans to the side, out of Dean's—and Castiel's—field of vision. The vampires feeding on him raise their heads and shift their grips, letting the blood continue to run down Dean's arms unchecked. "You're gonna want to shut your eyes, sweetheart."

"Don't," Dean chokes, his limbs rattling in uncontrolled panic as his head is forced back. Castiel stares out of Dean's eyes at the grease-stained ceiling of the trailer, and then his eyes shut just in time, and a wet substance is spilling onto them, stinging the skin. It dries almost instantly and Castiel feels—he _feels_ it, indistinguishable from his own, deep in his heart like a stab wound—Dean's panic ramping up as he realizes he can't open his eyes.

"Now his ears," sing-songs the vampire, and the hands holding his head in place are twisting it to the side.

Dean screams, or maybe Castiel screams, a sound that's cut off by a hand over his mouth, as the dark-haired vampire hisses, "You make a shitty prisoner, sweetheart. So from now on you're just our blood bag. This is the last thing you'll ever hear, so remember it: you're spending the rest of your pathetic life in this room with us. You're never getting out. You don't have a name. You don't have a body. You're a fucking meal in a skin and we own you."

There's pain deep in his ears as the epoxy is poured in, and the sounds around him fade into utter silence. Castiel, racing through the maze of vehicles, stumbles again as Dean's sensory deprivation overlaps with his own perception. Dean is blind and deaf, shaking on the trailer floor in renewed agony as the vampires start drinking from him again. Castiel is almost at the door now. He's reaching for the handle, he's with Dean on the floor, he's writhing and his arms are on fire, he can hear Dean crying out in pain even though Dean can't hear himself.

Castiel bursts into the trailer, where the three vampires are still crouched around Dean. Two of them have latched back onto his arms like human fleas. The third, the dark-haired one, has eased Dean's jeans down around his knees and is just beginning to press the tip of a knife blade to the half-healed sigil on Dean's thigh.

"Don't," Dean says, craning his neck to stare sightlessly in the direction of the vampire. His voice cracks. "Don't, _please_."

Castiel closes the distance so fast that it feels as though he doesn't even take steps. He bowls the vampires off of Dean, their bodies suddenly weightless and insubstantial, and presses his palm against Dean's forehead. The trailer dissolves around them, blown apart as Castiel shreds the nightmare to hazy fragments.

Castiel plummets through a brief and sudden darkness, Dean falling away from him. He expects to wake with Dean on the bed in the motel room, but instead his feet impact something solid and he rocks and blinks and looks around him in surprise.

The sky overhead is cloud-grey but bright. A cool breeze strokes his cheek. In front of him, a pewter-grey lake ripples under the same breeze, and sends small waves to lap gently at the dock beneath his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such a long time between updates! :0 All the apologies for keeping you guys waiting. Forgive me? I made this chapter nice and long! And filled it with copious misunderstanding and pain!


	7. Chapter 7

Castiel takes a step and the pier creaks gently under his feet. He looks down, surprised at the dream's vivid detail. In the pearly light the water of the lake is opaque, a metallic silvery-grey like mercury. The tips of his shoes are right at the edge of the dock. The last time he was here, he'd come to warn Dean of Heaven's plan to start the apocalypse. He remembers the mingled urgency and determination that had filled him then, the knowledge that he didn't have much time before his superiors realized his disobedience. Of course, he'd had even less time than he'd thought.

"Cas?" says Dean, from somewhere to his left.

Castiel turns and feels his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Some ten feet away, as though the dream has mirrored itself along an invisible axis, is an identical  dock, also extending from the lake's woodsy shore. On that dock, standing in the exact same spot, is another Castiel.

His double stands with its back to Castiel, facing a lawn chair in which a dazed-looking Dean is slumped. Dean's face is turned towards the dream-Castiel; a beer dangles loosely from his fingers and his expression is one of utter confusion.

"Cas?" Dean says again, staring at the dream-Castiel. His brow furrows; his eyes rove over the lake and flit back again. "Did you...was that you? Why are we...is this still a dream?"

Castiel takes a step towards the leftmost edge of his own dock, and at the same time the double moves, stepping in the same direction with a movement so similar that for a moment Castiel wonders if he really is just staring at a mirror. But when he looks over his shoulder, his own dock is empty. No Dean, just himself.

"Dean," says the dream-Castiel, in a voice of such utter tenderness that Castiel almost flinches.

"Cas," Dean breathes immediately, tipping his face up. The dream-Castiel reaches out and gently cups Dean's face, strokes something invisible off his forehead. Castiel, watching, feels something clenching in his gut—how many times has he imagined touching Dean this softly? Watching it now feels invasive, as if he's watching someone else caress Dean's face, a stranger that only superficially resembles him.

"You found me," Dean says.

"I did indeed," says the dream-Castiel. It strokes its fingers down the side of Dean's face, caresses the edge of Dean's jaw, the curve of his chin, and then it slides its hand down around Dean's throat and starts to squeeze.

Castiel's cry of alarm is drowned out by Dean's choked-off shout, and the crash of the lawn chair tipping over as Dean tumbles out of it. He is thrashing in panic, his eyes round with shock and horror. The dream-Castiel follows Dean down to the weather-beaten wood of the dock, pinning him with its weight, one hand closed inexorably around Dean's throat.

"You know that you belong to me, don't you?" it coos. "Don't you, Dean?"

Castiel lunges forward and is met with invisible resistance, the air thickening to impassability at the edge of his dock, keeping him from leaping into the dark water, crossing the space. He hammers at the unseen force. "Dean!"

Dean's face is turning a dark crimson, his eyes bulging as his fingers scrabble uselessly at the dream-Castiel's hand and forearm. He doesn't react to Castiel's voice, but the dream-double does. It turns its head slowly, almost mechanically, and smiles at Castiel.

"Oh," it purrs. "So it's you."

"Who are you?" Castiel demands. This thing isn't him. It _can't_ be him. It smiles at him with Jimmy Novak's mouth and the look in its eyes is nothing but cruelty.

"What are _you_?" retorts the dream-Castiel. It leans onto its arm, adding to the force crushing Dean's throat. A trickle of blood runs from the corner of Dean's mouth. The sky darkens ominously.

Castiel rams his shoulder into the invisible wall holding him back. "You're killing him!"

"He doesn't belong to you," says the dream-Castiel. "Not anymore. He belongs to me. Isn't that right, Dean?"

Dean's feet are twitching and jerking, his heels knocking a percussive staccato against the planks. "Cas," he croaks at the sky. "Cas. Help." His bloodshot eyes roll back into his skull.

"Down you go," hums the dream-Castiel. "Wait for me, sweetheart. Won't be long now."

"Dean!"

Castiel flings himself at the barrier with all his strength and hits the motel room floor with a thud. He taps into the momentum of the fall and rolls to his feet, adrenaline surging in his ears. Dean is up on his elbows in the bed, breathing hard. He turns, meets Castiel's eyes, and his face darkens.

"You saw," he says. It's only half a question. He pushes himself into a sitting position.

"Dean, I—"

"You _looked_...you went into my _head_."

"Yes. I was trying to help—"

"I don't need your fucking help. Not with that."

"Dean, that dream..."

"It's none of your business, Cas!"

"It was _me_ ," says Castiel angrily, "you dreamed that I _strangled_ you, Dean, is that—is that what you—"

Dean looks at Castiel for a minute, his eyes very wide, and then his shoulders drop a little. The choppy sea of his emotions calms slightly. "No. _No_. I don't know why I dreamed that. It wasn't...the other thing, in the trailer, with the vamps, that was...I've dreamed it before, that was normal."

"Normal?" says Castiel incredulously.

Dean shrugs. "You get your eyes tarred over, it leaves an impression, man." He slides out of bed. "On the dock, that was...I don't know. I _knew_ it was a dream. It was like when you tried to warn me about the apocalypse—"

"It wasn't me," Castiel says immediately.

"I know. I saw you. On the other dock. While the other you was—" Dean's hand goes to his throat.

"Dean—"

"Anyway," Dean interrupts, speaking quickly. "Freaky stuff. But hey, dreams are weird." He slides out of bed and pads toward the bathroom.

"Wait," says Castiel. The panic of watching Dean get strangled in front of him is ebbing and he's turning over the pieces of the earlier nightmare. "The vampires, they didn't just feed on you, they—"

Dean stills, his hand on the bathroom doorknob. "Were dicks about it? Yeah, they were. We don't need to talk about it."

"They told you that you couldn't leave." Castiel moves toward Dean. "Is that why you didn't want to go out, earlier? Because of what they said?"

Dean blinks and looks away and for a moment Castiel thinks he's going to brush this off too, say something else flippant and move on. Then he looks back at Castiel and says, low, "It's stupid."

_It's weak_ , his expression is saying.

"Not at all," says Castiel urgently. He stops beside Dean and puts a hand on Dean's arm. "It makes sense. Dean, what they did to you—"

"I'd really rather not talk about it, Cas."

"Then don't," says Castiel, "but just know that I could never think less of you, Dean. For anything. And whatever I can do to help you heal—"

"You already healed me," says Dean, gesturing to himself with a grand, flippant sweep of his arm that dislodges Castiel's hand. "I'm fine. Are there burgers in that bag, by the way?"

"Yes—and clothes," says Castiel, caught off guard by the abrupt conversational pivot. Although he really shouldn't be surprised at this point by Dean's ability to change the subject.

"Not in the same bag, I hope," says Dean.

"No, the drive-thru didn't sell clothes."

That gets an actual chuckle out of Dean for some reason.

***

Dean seems pleased with the clothes Castiel picked out, and disappears into the bathroom to change. Castiel sorts through the frozen meals, now well on their way to being unfrozen, and squats in front of the motel's tiny minifridge to stow them away. He hadn't considered the fact that the freezer portion would be so cramped, and trying to sequester every meal package feels rather like a logic problem with no solution. He's huffing in frustration and trying to jam a container of half-thawed sweet-and-sour meatballs into a corner when Dean comes back out of the bathroom, smoothing wrinkles out of his flannel. He has Castiel's coat draped over one arm.

"What do you think?" he asks, holding out his arms hesitantly. There's a wry quirk in the corner of his mouth, as if he knows Castiel can see his self-consciousness.

"They fit well," says Castiel, noting with satisfaction that he'd guessed Dean's measurements correctly.

"Yeah, no kidding." Dean does a little half-turn, tugging at his jeans. "How'd you guess the sizes? You'd better not have been creeping through my laundry, Cas."

Castiel attempts to turn the meatball package sideways. "I rebuilt your body from scratch, Dean," he says distractedly. "It hasn't changed much in size since then."

The silence that follows this statement makes him turn back towards Dean, whose ears have gone an odd shade of pink and whose soul is flaring with—Castiel pulls determinedly back, refusing to examine Dean's emotions too closely. He's violated enough of Dean's privacy as is—and the answers would only make things more difficult for him anyway, he suspects.

Dean stares determinedly at the floor and holds out the coat. "Uh. Thanks for letting me wear it."

"Just put it on the bed." Castiel rolls one sleeve up to the elbow as he tries shoving the package all the way into the back of the freezer compartment with brute force. The minifridge creaks ominously. For all his earlier resolve, the flare of cobalt from Dean rocks through his defenses and he has to bite his lip to keep from crossing the room and pinning Dean to the wall and—

_Stop it, Castiel._

He rams the stupid container into the freezer compartment and shuts the door with rather more force than is required. Can this really all be attributed to Dean's six months of captivity? Castiel remembers the aimless, directionless wants that had stirred his human body occasionally, but that had been sporadic, easily ignored, at least when he wasn't around—

—around Dean, whose gentle pulses of _wanting_ feel near-constant, now, until the room feels suffused in them. Castiel rises, brushing drops of meltwater off his hands, stalling before he has to turn and face Dean again.

_Dean_ , he imagines himself saying, _I know things are difficult for you, but I really need you to go out and, how would you put it, get laid, because this is driving me crazy._

Oh, yes, that would certainly go over well.

Dean would probably get in his face, Castiel thinks. Dean, who never listens, would probably not be reasonable even about this _small_ _thing_. Perhaps he would say something like, _oh yeah, Cas? Maybe you should do something about it_.

And Castiel would—

_STOP IT_ , he orders himself.

He isn't supposed to feel this. He isn't _allowed_ to. Not about Dean, or anyone. Not so much of it, not with such _physical_ hunger, the way his vessel did when it was human. It's foolish under any circumstances, and dangerous under these, when it's controlling him instead of the other way around, when it's making him _worse_ at attending to Dean's needs, not better—

"Cas, you spacing out on me?" Dean pats the coat impatiently, where it's now lying on the rumpled bedcovers. "I said, it's right here when you want it. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Feels like I'm looking at you naked."

Castiel sighs.

***

The burger is thoroughly at room temperature, but Dean doesn't seem to mind. He perks up quite a bit once the contents of the bag have been devoured. Unfortunately, this manifests in the form of him prowling endless loops around the motel room, prodding restlessly at the decor. His soul flutters and flares like a bird preparing for flight, though it still shies away each time he passes the door. Occasionally he bursts into flurried action, shadowboxing and swinging his limbs in big, extravagant movements. It's immensely distracting, and Castiel busies himself determinedly with his laptop.

He skims through news sites and paranormal forums for any clue to Sam's whereabouts; having no luck, he finally opens a new browser and types in the address for a niche antiques site. It's the kind of site where most of the postings have wild claims about hauntings and magical qualities—wardrobes possessed by the ghosts of grandmothers, rusty knives claiming to be ceremonial daggers, the like. Most of the responses are from ignorant enthusiasts with too much trust and too little financial sense. It's an unreliable source, but one that he knows Sam is nevertheless in the habit of checking, just in case anything legitimate ever crops up.

_Found_ , he types into the header of a new posting. _Winchester revolver, still functional. Somewhat haunted. Examination indicates presence of ghosts dating back six months._

He hesitates, then adds, _Call for details_. He doesn't add a number—Sam's the only person he's interested in hearing from.

"What're you doing?"

Castiel jumps. He hadn't noticed Dean walk over. "Trying to reach Sam."

"Oh. Good. Think he'll pick up what you're putting out there?"

"Hopefully something will get through," Castiel says cautiously.

"Well, when he gets his ass over here I can kick it for abandoning you."

"Dean," Castiel sighs. "That's not what..."

"Yeah, whatever, I know you said he had his reasons. I'm just saying they'd better be good, is all."

"He might have returned to the Bunker," Castiel offers, though he remembers the set of Sam's jaw when he'd left, and doubts it. "We should return to it, once you feel ready to leave."

"I can leave whenever," Dean says, defensively. "Just because I'm not jumping at the chance to drive hours and hours in that clunker out there doesn't mean I can't leave if we _have_ to."

"We don't have to, Dean. I told you we could take time, if you need it."

"Okay, well, I don't need it. Maybe I just _want_ it."

Castiel falls silent. Dean is glaring at him almost defiantly.

"Just nice," he clarifies, dropping his eyes and studying his knuckles. "After six months of...pretty close to hell, it's nice just being safe with you, alright? 'm not in a hurry to leave, is all."

He's lying—Castiel can sense the fear in his soul, terrified ghosts stirred up by the thought of venturing out—but he's also not. It's a confusing tangle that Castiel doesn't know how to parse. _Just being safe with you_. Something warm unfurls in him and he tries frantically to fold it back up, because it's dangerous, it's dangerous for him to _want_. He'll always want more than what Dean's willing to give. Dean's kindnesses are a trap he doesn't know he's setting, and if Castiel isn't careful, he'll fall again and again.

"Cas?" Dean's voice breaks him out of the reverie, and the touch on his arm—that's _Dean's_ hand on his arm, _Dean's_ fingers warm against Castiel's bare skin. Dean's soul twines cobalt and indigo through the space between them; Dean's pulse hammers out from his fingertips like a symphony. Castiel feels it echoing through his vessel's bones; he is an empty church, Dean is song, Dean is a bell, Dean is incense and smoke in the golden light—

Castiel shuts his laptop and stands, sucking in a breath that smells altogether too much like Dean for comfort.

"I have to go out," he tells Dean.

"What the hell for?"

"I forgot to get something," Castiel invents wildly. "Some supplies for the truck." He knows this much: he can't stay in this room a minute longer, not with Dean so close, not with the firebrand _heat_ of Dean and Dean's easy smile and the pain that roils underneath it and Castiel's thrumming desire to soothe that pain, to hold Dean close and make him forget anyone else who's ever touched him—

"I won't be long," he blurts, and all but runs from the room, grabbing his coat as he passes the bed, Dean's startled protests and the yellow-white recoil of his soul trailing Castiel out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Castiel bonds with a working girl and some decisions are made

Castiel doesn't have a particular destination in mind when he flees—no need to sugarcoat it—the motel room, but he ends up in a nondescript diner, toying with a plate of fries he has no real intention of eating.

"Sure I can't get you anything else, hon?" says the server brightly. She'd raised her eyebrows when he'd requested just fries and now seems determined to sell him on something more substantial. "We got a great burger."

"I'm alright, thank you," says Castiel. He finally puts a fry in his mouth and chews slowly, hoping to ward off further questions. It's quite late at this point and the diner is fairly empty, to the point that she's stopped to check on him more than he assumes is normal. He's been sitting at the slightly sticky booth for over an hour and he supposes it probably seems odd he hasn't touched the food—the man in the booth across from his keeps stealing suspicious glances at Castiel over the top of his crossword.

Vaguely, Castiel wonders why he came here, to do this very human activity that he certainly has no need for. Perhaps it's because this is the kind of place Dean would have stopped at for a meal.

It occurs to him that he could _bring_ Dean a meal—the burger from earlier had seemed to cheer him up more than anything else Castiel's been able to do. Maybe that's the right angle to take; maybe the more physical comforts and familiar things he can provide Dean, the further away he'll be able to drive the memories of imprisonment and the better Dean will feel.

So he waves the server back over and asks for a box for the fries, and a burger and a slice of pie to go. He pays and tips the fries clumsily into the styrofoam container she brings him, already thinking ahead to the way Dean's eyes will light up when he sees the pie. Castiel will think of some kind of excuse for running out, something more believable than supplies for his truck, and Dean will enjoy the pie and maybe things will be a little better in the morning.

He fumbles with the container, trying to close it while also scanning the restaurant to see if the server is coming back with the pie, and accidentally dumps half the fries out onto the table.

"It's called a to-go box, sweetheart," the man with the crossword snipes nastily, "ever heard of them?"

Castiel is saved having to come up with an effective reply by the server's return.

"Here you are, hon." She hands him the bag and waves off his attempts to pick up the scattered fries. "Don't worry about those, just enjoy your dinner, okay?"

"Thank you," says Castiel gratefully, smiling at her and getting a friendly pat on the arm in return as he leaves.

He hurries back to the corner where he'd parked but ends up standing next to his truck, keys in his hand, something nagging at him. While he's fiddling with the keys and trying to remember what, if anything, he's forgotten, the bar across the street spits out a handful of customers, most of them moving in the uneven gait of the thoroughly intoxicated. A few of the figures cross the street toward him, and as they get closer he sees that they're all women, wearing high heels and pulling jackets over clothes ill-suited for the cool night air.

"I'm starving," one of them is complaining. "Think they got any pie left?"

They walk past him toward the diner, but one pauses, drifting in his direction. She's tall, almost as tall as Dean in her heels, and she flashes him a languid smile and halts by the rear end of his truck.

"Hey, stranger," she purrs. "You looking for something?"

Castiel frowns, taken aback for a moment by her easy demeanor, and then he looks again at her clothes and her heels and puts it together—he's been to enough bars with Dean, after all.

And there was that night, years ago, when he'd thought Raphael might kill him the next day and Dean had—

He brushes the thought away. "You're a stripper."

"Jesus," she says, "no need to be rude. We can't all be—what are you, an accountant?"

"I'm sorry," says Castiel, flustered, aware that his realization had come off as accusatory. "I didn't mean—"

"Hey, it's cool, I like my job." She tosses back her pale curls, winks. "Doesn't mean I don't do a little freelancing here and there, if you know what I mean." She sidles closer, running her hand along the frame of the truck, tilting her head to show off the long clean line of her neck. "So? What do you say? My shift's over, you look like you got space up front there."

Castiel is opening his mouth to turn her down when the bag, crinkling in his grip, reminds him that he's trying to bring familiar things to Dean, and this—surely this is something that's familiar to Dean. Something physical, a comfort that Castiel can't offer—and something Dean wants, if the constant directionless desire rolling off his soul is anything to go by.

"Actually," he blurts. "I'm not. I mean, I don't. But I've got a friend."

"Don't see anyone with you."

"We're, uh. We're staying at a motel." He gives her the name of the motel.

"Nope, nuh-uh." She pulls to a halt, crosses her arms. "I don't do off-site visits, hon. That's how you get dead. Or worse."

"Please. He's been..." Castiel flails momentarily for an explanation that won't seem alarming. "Lonely. He's had a...a rough couple months, and he could use..."

She smirks, arches a well-manicured eyebrow. "A warm body for a few hours?"

Castiel winces, not from the bluntness of the statement but because the phrase makes him think of the warmth of Dean's body, and how it had felt to have that curled next to him, and how much he wants to be the warm body that Dean needs, and how he isn't that.

The woman tilts her head, looks him in the eye. "Listen, I feel for your buddy, it's cool that you're being a good friend. But you could also be one of those crazy psychos. I like all my internal organs where they are, thanks very much."

Castiel digs in his pocket, pulls out some crumpled bills. "Two hundred," he offers. "Up front. If you get a bad feeling at any point, you can leave."

He sees her eyes slide to the money, sees her bite her lower lip thoughtfully. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a phone.

"I'm texting my brother," she informs him. "He's a mechanic, he beats up people _on the reg_. If he doesn't hear from me later tonight he knows where to come looking."

"Of course," says Castiel. He holds out the bills and she nips them out of his hand, tucks them away with the phone. Her thoughts are echoing loudly in her skull and he can see, as plainly as if it's written across her face, that she's lying; she isn't texting anyone, there's no one to fight for her, no one who would miss her if she were to vanish some lonely night after work. The part about the brother is true, or mostly true—he doesn't live in the state, she hasn't spoken to him in years. Castiel can feel this girl's pride, though, thrumming through her at the memory of her baby brother who was always so good with cars, and his own heart aches a little in response.

"I got my own ride," she tells him when he starts to gesture at the passenger side. "I know that motel—it's a _dump_ , by the way—I'll meet you there in twenty."

"Wait," says Castiel, "what's your name?"

"Cherry," she tosses over her shoulder, a fake name likely as not, and doesn't ask for his in return.

***

Cherry doesn't follow Castiel to the motel, but whatever route she takes is effective because she pulls into the parking lot only a few minutes after him, driving a battered old sedan with one headlight out.

"You're coming in?" she says with raised eyebrows, as he leads her to the door. Her earrings sway as she walks, twinkling in the outdoor lights. "If you want to watch, that's fine, but I'm not gonna—"

"I just need to drop off the food," says Castiel hastily, lifting the bag from the diner. He can hear the low hum of the TV from inside the door. "And explain. He's not going to be expecting—er, you."

Now that they're actually here, about to go in, unease is curling in his chest. It's a good plan, he tells himself again—Cherry is beautiful, her easy smile warm and careless. She's the kind of girl he's seen Dean's eyes follow, in bars and clubs and on sidewalks, and once Dean's soul has had the kind of companionship it's been clamoring for, maybe it will settle a little. (Meaning, maybe it'll be easier for Castiel to exist in the same room as Dean without being buffeted by that cobalt tide of longing. Without having to tamp down his own desire to cross the room and back Dean against the wall, and—)

"So, we doing this, or you gonna keep brooding?" Cherry rubs her arms, bounces up and down in place. "Getting kind of cold over here."

Castiel shakes off his doubts and unlocks the door. Pushes it open. Dean's inside, slumped on the bed, watching television with a kind of hazy disinterest. He looks up when Castiel enters, scowling.

"Oh hey Cas. How long are you staying this time—" He breaks off, eyes going wide and then immediately narrowing, as Cherry comes into the room.

"Dean," says Castiel. "This is Cherry."

"Hey," drawls Cherry.

Dean swings his legs off the bed and stands, his face completely expressionless. "You could've gotten a different motel room at least, Cas," he says lightly, but one hand is gripping the bedside table so hard that the knuckles are completely white.

"I was just," Castiel starts.

Dean crosses his arms. "I mean, don't let me cramp your style, she's gorgeous. Next time just text me and I'll clear out."

"—going to wait in the truck," Castiel says, confused, but Cherry is already sauntering forward.

"Hon, relax." She shrugs out of her jacket, heads directly for Dean, heated interest very evident in her gaze. "I'm here for _you_."

Dean chokes. "Excuse me—"

"Blue-eyes over there wasn't interested." She winks at Castiel, who hears a faint pop and realizes that he's clutching the bag so tightly that the styrofoam is cracking. "I told him he could watch, though."

Dean backs up as Cherry approaches. "Whoa, okay, stop."

Cherry stops. She turns to Castiel again, this time with a look of exasperation. "You made it sound like he'd be a lot more enthusiastic," she says, testy. "Oh, god. Is he a virgin?"

"I am _not_ a virgin," snaps Dean. "Cas, what the _fuck_?"

Cherry starts pulling her jacket back on. "I'm outta here."

"Cherry, wait," Castiel pleads. He stoops to set the bag down on the floor. "Dean, I met her in town and I just thought you'd want—"

"That I'd want a _hooker_?"

"Hey!" objects Cherry.

"I have a rule about that, Cas," Dean hisses.

"No need to get so fucking high and mighty about it," says Cherry, marching back past Castiel. "Lots of guys have rules until you catch 'em when their wives are away. Whatever. Your loss, man."

"Cherry—" Castiel follows her back out to the parking lot.

"Look, you," she says coolly, zipping up her jacket. "I know a guy who doesn't wanna sleep with me when I see one."

"I'm so sorry," says Castiel. "I thought..." He scrubs at his face, suddenly tired. "You had to drive all this way..."

Cherry side-eyes him as she unlocks her car door. "I'm keeping the money."

"Yes, of course," says Castiel, who doesn't have any attention of asking for it back. "That was upfront payment."

Cherry's expression softens a little. "Listen, hon. That was a sweet thing you tried to do for your friend, okay? Not your fault I wasn't his type."

"It's not you," Castiel says quickly. "You're very beautiful. And very kind. I think things are just confusing for him right now. He's had..."

"A rough couple of months, right. Listen.  _Hon_." She pats his arm.

Castiel gestures aimlessly, lets his rambling explanation trail off. "...yes?"

"Trust me on this. That boy knows exactly what he wants. Whether he _asks_ for it is another matter."

"What?"

She shrugs and gets into the driver's seat. "Any more specific than that and I'd have to charge you for the advice, you got it?"

"Wait." Castiel puts his hand on the door. "Call your brother."

She stares at him, her eyes wide, looking disarmed for the first time. "What?"

"Call your brother. He misses you." He shuts the door and steps back, lifting one hand in an awkward half-wave.

Her eyes stay fixed on his, her brow furrowed, but she turns the key in the ignition. The car splutters to shaky life, and she gives him one last pointed look and says something Castiel doesn't catch over the growl of the engine starting. _Hug your friend,_ it sounds like? He doesn't quite catch the first word. She peels out of the parking lot with a screech of worn tires that probably have made Dean blanch with horror. Castiel sighs and turns back to face the consequences of his ill-conceived plan.

Inside the room, Dean is pacing agitatedly, running his hands through his hair. As Castiel shuts the door behind him, Dean whirls and inhales, face thunderous.

"Dean," Castiel starts, and that's about as far as he gets before Dean bursts out, "Cas, what the _hell_ , man?"

"I thought," Castiel tries, but Dean strides forward, jabbing his finger at the air between them as if personally offended by it.

"Why the _hell_ would you think that's something I'd want? And what the fuck gave you the idea that you had any right to—to—" He flings one hand toward the door, choking on the words.

"She seemed like the type of girl you enjoy sleeping with," says Castiel, because she _had_ , she'd been _exactly_ what Dean should have wanted, and yet Dean hadn't responded at all to her presence, hadn't reacted to her obvious desire, her obvious availability, and Castiel doesn't _understand_.

Dean's face twists in something like anguish, before he schools it back into hard anger. "I don't need a _pity_ lay, Cas, _fuck_."

"It wasn't—" Castiel's hands curl into fists, despite himself. If his plan was foolish, it was still well-intentioned, and Dean's rage is unfair, it's just like Dean to _act_ _like this_ —

"I _know_ I'm broken, alright?" Dean hisses. "You healed me but you can't heal everything, Cas, okay, and—and I'm a fucking mess and I know that and I know you can barely fucking stand to be in the same _room_ as me, but I don't need you to be my fucking _wingman_. _I don't need it_ , alright? I don't need any bigger of an audience for _this_." He spreads his arms wide, derision curling his lip, while his soul spits a black self-loathing as caustic as lye.

"You—think I don't want to be around you?" says Castiel slowly. The absurdity of it almost leaves him winded, and he has the sudden, ridiculous urge to laugh out loud.

Dean moves even closer, breaking all the personal space rules he's so patiently drummed into Castiel's head over the years. His jaw knots as he grits out, "I _get_ it, okay? I know what you see when you look at me, and it's _true_ , so I don't—I don't fucking blame you, but it's bad enough I can't even leave this stupid room, I don't need any more reminders that I can't—that you don't want—that you—"

"You're wrong," Castiel blurts. Dean's fragmented words are slotting together, but too slowly for him to make sense of them. All he can muster at this particular juncture is an urgent need to correct this mistake, to stem the dark tide of Dean's misery.

"You think I haven't noticed—you can barely stand to _touch_ me, Cas—"

Castiel kisses him.

Dean freezes, his whole body going rigid, and then he melts forward into the kiss, his whole body relaxing into Castiel. For one glorious moment their mouths and bodies are slotted against each other, Dean furnace-hot and yielding under Castiel's touch, the taste of him electrifying, and Castiel wonders, with a kind of savage joy, why he didn't do this hours or _months_ or _years_ ago—

Dean breaks away a second later, but only a few inches. His eyes are enormous. He glances up from Castiel's mouth and then back down again, and a flicker of fear shows in his gaze for a moment, as if he's somehow still uncertain of what Castiel is telling him.

"Cas. What—"

"What I can't stand," Castiel says quietly, "is _not_ touching you, every second of every minute I'm lucky enough to spend with you."

Dean chokes. His hands are tangled in the front of Castiel's coat. Castiel can't remember exactly how or when they wound up there.

"I just wanted you to know," says Castiel. "What my feelings are."

Dean drops his chin almost to his chest. His breath hitches; his mouth moves soundlessly. "...please," he mutters finally.

Castiel tips his head. "Please what?"

Dean closes his eyes and exhales, a tiny gasp. His heartbeat is thunderous, filling the room with its rapid-fire drumming.  "Please fucking kiss me aga—"

Castiel twists one hand into the front of Dean's shirt, buries the other in Dean's wrecked hair, and spins them both around into the wall.

Dean hits first, back and shoulders slamming against the plaster, and Castiel releases him so that he can slam his palms into the wall on either side of Dean's head. He can hear the cheap material crunch under the impact, but he doesn't care—doesn't, to borrow a turn of phrase from Dean, _give a_ _fuck_ —he brackets Dean's face with his arms and presses forward to meet Dean's mouth with his own, and _this_ , this is worth all of it, every choice Castiel's made, every ounce of Heaven's favor lost, everything he's given up, for this man warm against his mouth, holy on his tongue—

Dean's soul is unfurling and blooming like some sort of flowering supernova, and it's only when Castiel registers its unmistakable cobalt surge that the pieces finally click together. He jerks back, startled. Dean leans toward him, panting a little, his pupils dilated.

"It was me you wanted," Castiel says, in surprise. "This whole time?"

"Goddammit," says Dean, his eyes on Castiel's mouth. "Yes, you idiot."

Castiel feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, in tandem with the wonder slowly opening up in his chest. "That was disrespectful."

"Oh yeah?"

" _You're_ disrespectful."

"What are you going to do about it," snips Dean. He leans forward, and Castiel stops him with a hand pressed to the side of Dean's face. He cradles Dean's jaw, traces the outline of Dean's lips with his thumb. Breathes in the warm scent of Dean, the smoke and fire of him.

Dean opens his mouth around Castiel's thumb, closes his lips around the first joint. He looks up through lashes painted gold by the lamp behind them, and heat suffuses Castiel, beyond what he can attribute to Dean's body. He pulls his hands back, reaches down to slot them behind Dean's thighs.

"I'm going to do a lot," Castiel says, and with an easy motion— _easy_ , it's so _easy_ , why was all of this so hard to do?—he lifts Dean off the ground and into the lamplight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, looks like things are finally moving along for these two idiots! Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, comments are super SUPER appreciated. <3
> 
> (And in case anyone didn't guess, what Cherry said to Castiel was not _quite_ "hug your friend".)


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel knows Dean's body intimately—he rebuilt it molecule by stacked molecule, after all, in the dark space of a coffin buried six feet deep. He released Dean's soul into it, watched it expand and curl to fit every crevice and curve. If that isn't enough, hasn't he spent the better part of a decade watching Dean, watching the way he moves and carries himself, the way he laughs and cries, the lift of his chin, the set of his jaw, the easy movement of his hands? Hasn't he healed Dean more times than he can count, hurt Dean more times than he can be ashamed of, felt the planes of Dean's body break under his curled fist or stitch themselves together beneath his open palm?

But Castiel tips Dean onto the rumpled bedspread now and thinks to himself that there is nothing so new under the sun, so unmapped and unknown, as Dean's body underneath him at this moment. On his back, Dean swallows and shifts, his eyes wide, the pupils dilated. Dean scoots further up on the mattress, and Castiel drops onto the bed beside him. He swings one leg over Dean's body and crouches over it, bending to fit their mouths together again.

" _Cas_ ," Dean pants when they break apart after several long seconds or perhaps minutes or hours.

"Dean." Cas tangles his fingers in the hem of Dean's shirt, bracing himself with one hand planted on the bed. He hesitates. "I. Can I."

"Anything. God, Cas, please, yes."

So Castiel slips his hand up under Dean's shirt, feeling the fiery heat of Dean's skin beneath, the sparks of white and rose-pink flying off his soul, the hammering of Dean's human heart. Dean props himself up on his elbows so that he can get his arms out of the garment as Castiel pulls it over his head.

"You too," Dean says, fumbling with the buttons on Castiel's shirt. He takes a little too long with the first one, biting down on his lower lip in increasing frustration, and Castiel tips his head.

"Are you nervous?"

Dean huffs out a soft laugh, and his gaze flickers up to meet Castiel's. "Yeah, man. A little."

"Don't be," Castiel tells him. He lifts his hand to the collar of his own shirt, above where the line of buttons begins, and then he curls his fingers into the crisp fabric and rips, straight down. Threads snap and buttons go flying and then the shirt is open, and Castiel is shrugging out of it.

Dean's mouth is hanging open. Castiel wants to kiss it, so he does. Internally, he marvels that he can kiss Dean's mouth simply because he wants to, _whenever_ he wants to.

Dean kisses back, fierce suddenly, his hesitation gone, their teeth bumping together for a moment. His hands come up to slide over Castiel's shoulders and back, his grip strong enough to bruise if Castiel had ordinary mortal skin.

They break apart again but Castiel stays bent over, forehead resting against Dean's. He breathes in the smell of Dean, runs his hands over Dean's chest.

"I don't—" Dean's breath hitches. He screws his eyes shut, inhales shakily. "I don't want to fuck this up."

Castiel kisses the corner of Dean's mouth, reveling in the way the touch makes Dean's soul flare and sing.  "Do you not want me?"

Dean's hands tighten on Castiel's hips, a sudden desperate movement. "Wh— _no_ , Cas, I—god, I've wanted you for so long, I—"

"So have I," says Castiel. He kisses below Dean's mouth this time, then down his jaw and neck, into the hollow at the base of his throat. He trails one hand along the gentle curve of Dean's belly, dips the very tips of his fingers beneath the upper hem of Dean's store-stiff jeans. He marvels, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, at the existence of this man, this soul, this body. "Too long to let us fuck it up now, Dean, trust me."

Castiel loses track of how the rest of their clothing gets removed or where it ends up. He's too focused on the pulse of Dean's soul, the movement of Dean's body, the desire twining and flaring through both. Dean's nearness is overwhelming; Castiel feels dizzy with his proximity to it, dizzy with the effort of maintaining the crucial separation between his essence and Dean's, the barrier he's taken such care to sustain. When he takes Dean in hand, Dean arches his back and makes a single soft sound, and his face is suddenly as open as Castiel has ever seen it, utterly vulnerable in this moment of pleasure.

Dean reaches for Castiel in return and Castiel hisses as pleasure shoots through him as well, a jolt that mirrors the blue-white lightning forking through Dean's soul. He speeds up the movement of his hand and Dean makes another sound, lower and more drawn-out, and Castiel thinks, _I would have rebelled just for this, for this alone_.

"Cas," Dean pants, "Cas, I'm gonna—"

"Not yet," Castiel tells him, and Dean makes a noise probably best classified as a whimper.

"Faster," Castiel says, even as he slows his own pace.

"Cas, _please_ ," Dean groans, but he obeys, his fingers expertly wrapped around Castiel as he strokes. Castiel hushes him with a hard kiss, keeps his hand slow until Dean bucks up into it, desperation clear in the lines of his body. Dean's free hand scrabbles over Castiel's hip, searching for better purchase, and Castiel hisses again as Dean's fingers coax more heat into his groin, more flickers of lightning down his spine. He speeds back up, drops his hips a little so that he bumps against Dean, their hands jostling each other.

"Oh god," Dean grits out, "god, _Cas_ — _fuck_ —"

Dean thrusts his hips upward again, into Castiel, and it's too much, it's _too much_ , the arch of Dean's spine, the bitten-off sounds dropping from Dean's lips, Dean's hands on Castiel and Dean's ragged breath in his ear. Castiel can feel pleasure pooling in the base of his spine and building; between that and the echoing lightning emanating from Dean's soul, his control feels dangerously close to slipping—and he _wants_ it to, he wants Dean, _all_ of Dean, wants to feel everything of Dean, no tenuous barriers between them.

"Dean," he gasps, "Dean—can I feel you—Dean please let me—"

Dean's head is flung back, his throat beautifully bared. "Yes," he pants, a jerky nod, and then he's gone, spilling over Castiel's fingers. His soul lights up like a tangle of coalescing stars, and Castiel drops any pretense of separation—he's dropping to one elbow, the hand that was bracing him going instead to Dean's shoulder, gripping it so tightly the skin goes white, and Dean's soul is colliding with him so hard he thinks the entire room might be shaking. He thinks he hears his own name, he thinks he's calling out a name in return, he thinks he's calling out words in languages that aren't even spoken anymore. He's wrapped in Dean's soul and Dean's soul is wrapped in him. His vessel's eyes are screwed shut but his true eyes are opening, all of them drinking in the light that is _Dean_ , ecstasy running like water and lightning through his wingtips and his mortal heart, crackling in his ears and under his skin and he can't tell where his pleasure ends and Dean's begins.

"Cas?"

It ebbs, slowly. The light and exultation of it all recedes until Castiel is aware of the bounds of his vessel again, aware of Dean's warmth under him and a sleepy, luxurious sort of bliss spreading through his limbs. He opens his eyes, is startled when darkness greets him.

"Dean?"

Dean laughs, the sound warm and rich and genuine in the darkness. "I'm here."

"What happened to the lamp?"

"You, uh...you blew it out, dude. When you, when you came. Streetlight outside, too."

"Oh." Castiel blinks down at Dean. He slowly lowers himself onto his side to lie next to Dean. Lets one arm stay draped over Dean's chest, avoiding the release cooling on Dean's skin. "I'll fix it." _Later_ , he thinks. He doesn't want to move for a long time.

Dean turns his head to look at Castiel. Their faces are so close that their noses bump together when he does. "Is that gonna happen every time?"

"Mmm." Castiel kisses Dean's shoulder. "Not every time."

"And the...the," Dean hesitates, "the other part? Where I felt..."

"You felt that?" says Castiel, surprised. He wonders what it felt like for Dean, human as he is.

"I'm not really sure _what_ I felt," says Dean. He winds his fingers through Castiel's. "I mean. Uh. It felt good. Obviously. But it, it felt good for _you_ too, and it was like—I mean, this is crazy, but it was like I could _feel_ that it felt good for you—"

"You could," says Castiel. "I felt your soul. I felt what you were feeling."

"You felt my _soul_?"

"Yes. More than I usually do. Does that bother you?"

Dean frowns, turning his head back to stare at the ceiling. "No. I mean...it was intense. Gonna take some getting used to."

"I apologize. I'll try to maintain more restraint, next time. I wasn't expecting it to be that...dramatic. But then, things have always been unexpected, when it comes to you."

Dean rolls onto his side and leans in to kiss Castiel, his hands slipping around to cradle the back of Castiel's neck. "No, it was good, Cas, really. Intense, but...really good. Was it—was it good for you?"

"Yes," says Castiel simply. "It was incredible."

"Well, not like you've done this a lot," Dean deadpans.

"Shut up, Dean," says Castiel. "I repeat, it was incredible, and so were you. Your soul is always beautiful, but being close with you physically amplified it. It's hard to describe how much I wanted you, how much I wanted to feel not just your physical body but your soul as well. Giving in to that, having that, was...indescribable. I just wasn't expecting the shared sensation to be reciprocal."

"Hmm." Dean ducks his head into Castiel's shoulder, tangles their legs together. "We should shower."

"In a minute. Don't deflect. You are beautiful and I'll keep telling you that until you listen."

"Good luck with that." Dean pauses. "There was something else."

"What?"

"It looked like—wings. Or the shadows of wings. Just before the lights went out. You looked like you had wings, for a moment."

"I do have wings," Castiel says.

Dean rolls over so that he faces away from Castiel, and wriggles backwards until their bodies are lined up, flush against each other. Castiel wraps his arm across Dean's chest, feels Dean's hands come up to curl around his forearm and wrist. "You never show 'em. I mean, not except for that first time."

"True."

"You can't?"

"I could. But I'd rather not." Now it's his turn to hesitate. "They aren't a pleasant sight, these days." He doesn't feel like trying to put into words the shame of it, the revulsion he feels towards his own form.

"Do they hurt?"

Castiel presses his nose into Dean's hair. "Always."

Dean's soul shivers a little, blooming in purple and gold. But he doesn't say anything, not for several long minutes as the two of them lie slotted together in the darkness. _This too_ , Castiel thinks. _I would have rebelled just for this, only this_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and then they were happy and domestic forever and no more bad things happened ever!


	10. Chapter 10

Castiel is on the dock again. He turns his head to the left and sure enough, there is Dean, sitting on an identical dock ten feet away, staring out at the silvery water. Dean is alone this time, no malicious dream iteration there to strangle him, and Castiel finds himself smiling as he watches the way Dean tips his head back, the way the soft light plays on his face. Castiel turns his head in the other direction and there the dream-Castiel is, right next to him, so close their shoulders are almost brushing.

Castiel takes a step back, tensing. The not-Castiel smiles at him. Its expression is cold and Castiel wonders what formless part of Dean's subconscious it was generated from.

"So he's with you now," it says.

"Yes," says Castiel.

"Enjoy it while you can," says the not-Castiel. "You and I both know Dean can be a bit...flighty. Bit of a runner, our boy."

Castiel bristles. "I don't know what you are, what kind of terror you represent for Dean, but he is not _yours_. No matter how often he dreams you here."

"But he's yours?"

"He's his own." Castiel glances over at Dean, oblivious only a few yards away.

The not-Castiel smiles again. "No. He's mine. And I don't let what's mine escape."

"What are you?" Castiel demands, losing patience. "What are you, and why do you look like me?"

Its smile widens. "But I don't." Its face shifts, the features melting and changing, the eyes darkening—

Castiel jolts awake, staring up at the ceiling, heart hammering in his chest. It's a moment before he's aware of the warmth against his shoulder; he turns his head and gets a mouthful of hair, registers in the same instant that Dean is pressed up against him, head pillowed on Castiel's shoulder, one arm thrown artlessly over Castiel's stomach.

 _Dean_. The events from the previous night come rushing back and Castiel catches his breath in wonder at it all. He brings his arms up, wraps them around Dean. Breathes in the warm scent of him.

"Hmm," hums Dean, burrowing closer. "S'morning already?"

"We don't have anywhere to go," says Castiel, amused. "We can stay in bed."

"Great plan," Dean mumbles. He starts tracing patterns onto Castiel's stomach with his fingertips. Castiel presses a kiss to the top of Dean's head and wonders if he's still in a dream, if he's going to wake up any minute and lose this, all of this.

There's a tentative knock at the door. Castiel lifts his head, puzzled.

"Thought you said we could stay in bed," Dean complains.

"It's probably housekeeping," Castiel says. "I...may have forgotten to extend our stay."

" _Cas_."

"I was a little preoccupied, Dean."

Dean groans and rolls over, pulling the blankets more tightly around himself. "Just ignore it, they'll go away."

The knocking comes again, tentative still, but insistent.

Castiel sits up and slips his bare feet out from under the covers. "I'll tell them we're staying another night."

"Yeah, and then come back here." Dean reaches behind himself and tangles his fingers in Castiel's as Castiel gets out of bed.

Castiel smiles down at Dean as he hastily pulls on his clothes. "You want your clothes?" Dean's jeans are in a crumpled heap halfway across the room.

"I got my boxers on, I'm decent," Dean grumbles. He yanks the covers up to his chin. "I'm not getting out of bed, anyway."

Castiel opens the door, but it's not a housekeeper standing outside. It's the man with the crossword, the one from the diner.

Castiel frowns. "You?"

"Sorry," says the man apologetically. He isn't holding his crossword now, of course, but his clothes are the same, albeit a bit more rumpled. His mouth tugs up in a rueful smile, half-embarrassed, half-amused. "I think you may have wound up with something of mine?"

Something about his eyes, the cadence of his voice, tugs at Castiel the way the man's smile tugs at his mouth. He frowns for a moment, distracted by it. Maybe this is why he reacts slowly—why he blinks and touches his own pockets, as if there was any way he could possibly have picked up the man's crossword or wallet or something during their brief interaction.

The man's eyes snap to something over Castiel's shoulder, and he smiles, a real smile now, his teeth showing.

"There it is," he says. " _Fiiye_." He thrusts his hand out at Castiel, and something very large and invisible slams into Castiel's chest, sending him flying backwards into the room.

He has time to think, urgently, _Dean_ , and then he hits the wall so hard that it knocks all the breath out of him. He doesn't _need_ to breathe, of course, but still. It's jarring. He lands on his hands and knees, struggling back up to his feet even as he shakes his angel blade out of his sleeve and into his palm.

The man strolls into the room. "Hello, sweetheart," he drawls, but he's not looking at Castiel. He hadn't looked at Castiel even to cast the spell that sent him flying.

Castiel's heart drops out of the bottom of his chest, and he turns to look at Dean. Dean, who has scrambled back against the headboard, his face white with terror. Dean, who is shaking his head frantically, his knees drawn up to his chest, his soul awash in frantic crimson.

" _Cas_." Dean's voice rises in pitch, breaking at the end of the word. "Cas you said you killed them all you said you SAID—"

Castiel swivels back to the man now standing in the middle of the room. _No_ , he thinks. _No, no, no_.

He must be saying it aloud, or maybe it just shows in his demeanor, because the man turns to look at him at last, a sudden, predatory movement like a bird of prey cocking its head. "Yes," he says.

Castiel lunges forward, blade raised. The man lifts his hand and snaps his fingers, and a tight ring of sickly green flame springs up around Castiel.

Castiel pulls up short, frantically yanking his wings in close to his body. He can feel the _wrongness_ of the flame licking at his true form, a blistering heat that laps at his grace the way holy fire does, but twisted somehow, a perversion of holy fire's cleansing wrath. If it works the same way, it won't just set his vessel ablaze—his true form will ignite as well. He has no desire to find out what the noxious emerald flames will do to his wings.

The vampire grins. _Vampire_ , because Castiel recognizes him now. It's the dark-haired vampire from Dean's dream, the one who'd pinned Dean down and carved those terrible symbols into him. His hair is shorter, the close-cropped locks framing his face differently, subtly altering its shape, but his smile is just as mocking, his voice just as lilting. But that's impossible, it's _impossible_.

"I _beheaded_ you," Castiel says. Because he _remembers_ killing the vampire in the camp, those few nights that feel like eons ago. In fact Castiel remembers killing him _first_ —remembers separating head from shoulders with a sweeping stroke of his blade before the vampire was halfway out of his seat.

"You must be new to the game, sweetheart. Always burn the body. My brain was just fine. Spinal cord, arteries?" He shrugs. "Not so hard to regenerate, especially when one has...precautions in place."

That's _impossible_ , Castiel knows it, and yet the vampire is here, clearly alive enough to throw Castiel across the room with a gesture.

Dean chooses this moment to fling himself out of bed, rolling across the floor and coming up on one knee, pistol aimed squarely at the vampire. Where and when had Dean gotten a gun? Castiel recognizes it as the one he keeps in his duffel of supplies, but that's sitting on the floor across the room, so Dean must have taken the weapon out at some earlier point. Has probably had it under his pillow this whole time. Old habits die hard.

"Get out," says Dean. His voice is shaking. So is his whole body. Castiel has rarely seen Dean so visibly afraid, and this, more than anything, terrifies him.

"Put that down," says the vampire dismissively. He lifts his hand, fingers poised. "Those flames? Greek fire. Marvelous stuff, water-resistant by the way—and this is my own special recipe. I snap my fingers, it closes in and burns your little sexual awakening to a crisp. It's not _quite_ holy fire, but trust me, it'll do the trick. He'll be dead before that bullet touches me."

"Beheading _kills_ vampires," Castiel says. He narrows his eyes. "But you're not just a vampire, are you." Pieces start falling into place. "You resurrected yourself. The sigils, the fire. You're a witch."

The vampire winks at Castiel. "Long before I was ever turned, sweetheart."

Dean looks at Castiel over the top of the gun, his eyes wild. Castiel curls his fingers into fists. If he thought the gun would do anything, he'd tell Dean to pull the damn trigger, but it's not loaded with witch-killing bullets.

"I said _put it down_ ," the vampire snaps, more irritation coloring his voice now. He lifts his hand and the flames flare higher, until Castiel hisses in spite of himself, shrinking inward in an effort to pull away from the poisonous heat of them.

"Alright, alright, _stop_." Dean tosses the gun onto the bed. "There. Don't hurt him."

"Don't hurt him?" The vampire doesn't drop his hand. "He took what was mine, Dean." The ring of flame tightens, until Castiel is sure his battered wings will catch; still he can do nothing except pull them closer and grit his teeth. He won't scream, but he can't stop the grunt of pain that escapes his clenched jaw as the fire sears the skin of his vessel with its nearness.

"Stop," Dean pleads. He drops his other knee, and Castiel _does_ want to scream then, it's wrong that Dean should be kneeling to anybody, it's _wrong_ — "Corin, please, stop, I'll do what you want." It's the first time Dean's ever named one of his captors.

Corin lowers his hand at last. Castiel hates himself for the bubble of relief he feels as the flames subside slightly and he is able to relax his wings. His grace flickers under the skin of his vessel, healing the mild burns.

"Such devotion," Corin murmurs, but his tone is mocking rather than impressed. He curls his lip as he looks over at Castiel.

"It was you," says Castiel. "In Dean's dreams, on the dock. You were in his head."

"Child's play with you so near, even before I'd pinpointed the exact location. Really stupid of you not to leave this place immediately. But then, I imagine you thought you were safe."

"Why'd you wait?" Dean says. He's still on his knees, but his entire body is rigid, his spine like a knife blade. His soul is shrinking into itself, opaque like clouded glass.

"Because he didn't know where we were," Castiel realizes. He looks at Dean. "The sigils that were hiding you from me. They hid you from him too."

Corin taps his head. Smiles again. "Not bad, sweetheart. Thanks for breaking those, by the way. Very useful for keeping Dean hidden while he was actually under my roof, but airtight work has its downsides, I suppose."

"Not so airtight," says Castiel quietly. "I found him, even with your sigils."

"Yes, that _is_ curious. Not to brag, but the inscription was foolproof. You shouldn't have been able to sense him at all." Corin tips his head and considers Castiel. "Curious," he repeats. "Well, I assure you, I will be layering in a few more precautions this time around."

"You are _not_ taking him with you."

The vampire snorts and ignores this, striding over to Dean, who flinches back but doesn't move from where he's down on his knees.

"Fascinating seeing you so...healthy," Corin murmurs, and actually licks his lips. Dean's jaw trembles.

Corin reaches out and puts the tips of his fingers under Dean's chin, tilts Dean's face up toward him. Dean goes with the motion, dropping his eyes so that he isn't meeting Corin's gaze even with his face upturned.

"Look at the angel, Dean," says Corin gently. He moves to the side and turns Dean's face. Dean's eyes slide over to meet Castiel's, but they're shuttered, haunted, as if Dean himself is shutting down, regressing into the shell he'd been when Castiel first rescued him and brought him back to this room. This room where he was supposed to be safe. Rage boils up in Castiel's chest—fury at Corin and his smug sneer, fury at himself for his own carelessness.

Corin sidles around so that he is standing behind Dean. His hand remains resting gently against Dean's face. When Dean tries to look down, Corin clucks and drags Dean's chin up again. Some kind of anger sparks in Dean's eyes at the touch, and Castiel seizes on it, evidence that Dean is not gone yet, not all the way.

"Eyes up, sweetheart. I want your angel to watch."

"Stop this," Castiel says. He shifts his grip on his angel blade in his hand, wonders if he could throw it. But Corin isn't particularly tall, and there's no clear shot with him standing behind Dean. "If you want me, you can have me, but let him—"

"Shut the _fuck_ up," says Corin, and anger flashes in his eyes for the first time. "You killed my nest, _Castiel_. They weren't witches. They couldn't regenerate. You killed my nest, and you took our property, and now you're going to watch while I take it back."

"Kill me then, if you're gonna," Dean snarls, his furious eyes still locked on Castiel.

"Dean, don't," says Castiel, and he doesn't know what he means—don't _what_? don't let him? don't do it?—all he knows is that he can't bear the terrified heaving of Dean's chest, the way he curls in on himself as Corin bends to hiss in his ear.

"Kill you? Oh no, Dean, no no no. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take you with me, cover your whole fucking body in warding sigils, and nobody, not your angel or God or the Devil himself, is ever going to see you again. I'm going to feed on you for forty years, Dean, I think you can last that long, don't you? It'll be slow, I promise you, it'll be so very slow. And when you're old and grey and empty I'll turn you, and you'll be a monster, just like me."

"I will find him," says Castiel, his voice hard. "Wherever you go, whatever you try, I will find him." He keeps his eyes trained on Corin, but he's speaking to Dean, trying to reassure him. _I will find you. No matter what happens here, I will find you, Dean._

"You can try." Corin shrugs. "Trust me, it'll be a waste of your time. But do try, anyway."

"He found me once," Dean whispers, straining away as Corin twists one hand into his hair.

"And I hope you've enjoyed your few days' respite," Corin drawls, sounding bored. He fishes in his pocket with his free hand. "In time, this will be just a blip, sweetheart. I promise you that. Just a brief flash in the long darkness of your days. You'll wonder if you dreamed it."

Corin removes what he was digging in his pocket for and drops it on the carpet in front of Dean: a pair of handcuffs. Dean looks down at them. Slowly, he reaches out.

"Dean, no—" Castiel starts desperately, and Corin glances up and suddenly Castiel is frozen in place, unable to speak, his face still twisted in mingled horror and fury.

Dean clicks the handcuffs into place around his wrists. He looks back up, his face expressionless. Castiel fights against whatever spell holds him in place, but it's useless; he can only stand helplessly, rooted to the carpet.

"I'm going to drink from you now, Dean," Corin says, speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a child. "Just to remind you who you really belong to."

Dean's face wavers, his soul beating against his ribs like a dying creature. He looks straight ahead, past Castiel, and waits.

"Oh, Dean, no," says Corin sweetly. He puts his hands on Dean's shoulders, trails them down Dean's back. "No, Dean, you know that's not how it works. Come on, now. You were doing it so well by the end. I want the angel to see what you're really good for."

A reflexive shudder goes through Dean, and his gaze flickers over to Castiel for an instant.

"Come on, Dean," says Coren again. "Bare for me, now." He glances at Castiel. "Or watch the angel burn."

Dean closes his eyes and tilts his head all the way to the side, exposing the curve of his throat. Castiel is caught by the clean line of it, by the memory of his own mouth on that line, only a few hours ago. He screams silently against the spell, flinging his grace at it. He hadn't known it was like this. Dean hadn't said. (Of course Dean hadn't said.) He'd known the vampires fed off Dean, of course, but he hadn't _known_ it was like _this_ , this power play, the capricious cruelty of it, the humiliation.

Dean's lips are moving soundlessly. Corin cups his face for a moment, then settles his hand around the front of Dean's throat, squeezing gently. "I can't hear you, Dean."

" _Please_ ," Dean rasps, so softly that Castiel can barely hear.

"Please what?"

" _Please_ , drink from me _."_

"Good boy," Corin says, as his fangs slide out, and then he bends and bites deep into the side of Dean's throat. Dean cries out, his eyes snapping open. His body jerks convulsively, like a marionette on strings, but Corin holds him tightly even as blood starts to trickle down Dean's throat and chest, along the gentle curve of his belly, soaking the hem of his boxers. It's a brutal, excessive feeding, ugly in its violence—even over the crackling flame, Castiel can hear the wet sounds of Corin's lips sealing over the wound, hear the way the soft tissues of Dean's throat are shredding around Corin's fangs.

Dean is hunched over now, Corin's weight driving him down into the floor as the vampire crouches over him. Castiel grits his teeth against the spell that holds him in place; if he could move, he'd fling himself through the fire now, consequences be damned, and hope that his disintegrating vessel knocked Corin loose. He can feel shame and agony twisting through Dean's soul, digging their hooked claws in, dragging it down into whatever dark pit had been its prison and refuge before Castiel rescued him.

Dean slowly lifts his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His eyes find Castiel's face, and Castiel watches something fracture in Dean's soul as their gazes meet, as Dean searches Castiel's immobile features for something and doesn't find it. Castiel seethes inwardly, knowing that his expression is still twisted into one of anger and horror, that he has no way to convey that the disgust on his face isn't directed at Dean. _It's not your fault_ , he thinks as loudly as he can, hoping against hope that something shows in his eyes.

Dean's pupils are blown wide, a thin white ring showing around his irises as he struggles for breath, folded almost double as he is by the vampire's grip. Corin shifts his grip and actually _moans_ into the side of Dean's neck, a luxurious sound of enjoyment as he drinks. Dean drops his gaze immediately back to the carpet between his knees, crumpling further into himself like a paper doll.

" _Fuck_ yes," Corin sighs at last, detaching himself with a smack. He turns to grin at Castiel, the entire lower half of his face dark with blood, and licks his lips suggestively. Castiel barely spares him a thought, focusing instead on the wound in Dean's throat. It looks deep, but the blood pulses only sluggishly; he has to trust the vampire knows how to feed without killing, given the horrific plan for Dean's future he outlined just minutes ago. Nevertheless Dean looks bone-pale, swaying slowly on his knees. His eyes are blank, utterly empty of emotion.

Corin is whispering something to Dean, his mouth pressed up against Dean's ear, smearing the side of Dean's face with his own blood. Whatever he's saying, it's too muffled for Castiel to hear, but he can watch the way the oily black poison of it sinks into Dean's soul.

Corin sits back on his heels, still grinning. He swipes his fingers carelessly through the blood trickling down Dean's bare chest, and then without warning he shoves them into Dean's mouth. Dean chokes on the sudden intrusion, his cuffed hands flying up to grab reflexively at Corin's wrist, but he doesn't pull away, even when the vampire drags his thumb across Dean's lower lip, slicking it red with blood.

Castiel trembles. He imagines killing Corin, doing it slowly, excruciatingly. Scattering the pieces after.

"Alright, let's be off," says Corin, suddenly brisk. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and grabs Dean's shoulder, yanking him to his feet. Dean goes without protest. He sways on his feet, his skin still deathly pale, and Castiel realizes that the feeding wasn't _just_ a power play to humiliate Dean, it was also a calculated tactic. Now he'll be too weak to fight even once they're out of range.

Corin turns Dean roughly, steering him to the door, and some kind of recognition dawns in Dean's eyes. He starts to struggle weakly; Corin huffs in impatience and slaps him, a sharp blow that sends Dean's head snapping to one side.

"Move along, Dean."

"Cas," Dean blurts, even as Corin drags him towards the door. He turns his head, blind panic written over his face. His chin is smeared with his own blood; his lips are bright with it. "Cas, please, don't let him, don't let him take me, Cas, please, don't."

Castiel doesn't respond—he can't. He fights against the witchcraft with everything he has, and still he stands frozen, unable to even look Dean in the eye.

"Cas. 'm sorry." Dean digs his heels in, his voice catching desperately. "I love you. I love you—"

"Save your breath, sweetheart," Corin laughs. He yanks open the door and shoves Dean forward.

Castiel screams. Inside, he screams, and he tells Dean that he loves him, he loves him, he has loved Dean for years, with everything he has, he will find Dean, he will hunt Corin across the earth, he will never rest until Corin is dead and Dean is safe—

Outwardly, he stands stock-still, his grace beating its fury against magical restraints. Corin pushes Dean out the door and gives Castiel one last mocking glance before he too exits. As the door shuts, the spell drops, and Castiel is able to move.

"Dean!" he calls, but it's too late. He rocks onto the balls of his feet, right at the edge of the fire, and listens helplessly to the retreating stamp of Corin's footsteps, the slower shuffle of Dean's. Feels Dean's soul retracting into itself even as it gets farther away.

What awaits Dean with Corin is a living hell, months or years of the same torment Castiel had found him drowning in those few days ago. Castiel doesn't know what other magic Corin has at his disposal, but if the original sigils kept Dean hidden for months until sheer luck brought Castiel close enough to find him, there's no telling how long it could be before Castiel is able to track Dean down again. It could be years. It could be longer. He can't let them leave. He can't let them leave, he can't lose Dean now, he _can't_.

Castiel looks at the verdant ring surrounding him, at the fire's slow dance. The tactical part of his mind is spinning rapidly, calculating timing and weighing odds and making guesses, all in service to the directive the rest of his mind is screaming, a ghost echo of the order he received from Heaven all those years ago, on the day the angels launched their foray into Hell.

Save Dean Winchester.

"Not _quite_ holy fire," Castiel whispers to himself, and in a split second he makes his decision, furls his wings in close, and launches all the divine intent and mortal flesh of himself through the green flames.

***

Were Castiel anyone else, and were the situation anything less dire, the pain might have been incapacitating. As it is, he nearly hits the ground as a searing, caustic agony envelopes him. It's not as _fast_ as holy fire—it's a slow, crawling fire, sluggish and heavy like napalm. He can feel the magical blaze eating away at what's left of his wings, which he'd used to shield the rest of his true form, letting them take the brunt of the flame as he dove through. Corin's fire consumes them even while they remain on the ethereal plane, and it _hurts_ , it hurts like they've been dipped into molten metal, like they're being devoured by a thousand tiny fanged jaws.

But. Before he was anything else—before he was a rebel, before he was fallen, before he was loved by Dean Winchester—Castiel was a soldier. He ignores the pain, moves through it, with it. Counts down, in a distant, impassive corner of his mind, the seconds he has left.

Corin is only a few steps into the small parking lot, half-leading, half-pulling a sagging Dean. They turn as Castiel slams the door nearly off its hinges and whips across the asphalt towards them.

Surprise flits across Corin's features, costing him a crucial split second. Then he opens his mouth, starting to lift one hand, but Castiel is _fire_ and _light_ and _grace_ , burning up like a meteor and nearly as fast. He's in front of Corin before the vampire can form words; he grabs Corin's jaw, holding it in place, and slaps the palm of his other hand down square onto Corin's face.

"Regenerate _this_ ," Castiel snarls, and chars Corin's brain to ashes.

It's enough grace to level a small house, and there's a fair amount of spillover; silver-white radiance fountains up around Castiel's palm, and most of the rest of Corin's body is also reduced to ash by the time bright flare of light ebbs.

Dean uncovers his eyes, which are wide with shock and relief.

"Cas," he sputters. "How—how did you—"

Castiel drops to his knees. The pain threatens to undo him altogether, but Dean is safe— _Dean is safe_ , he repeats to himself, feeling the manic desire to laugh out of sheer relief. The world swims in and out of focus. Asphalt scrapes under his palms—he's writhing on the ground, he realizes, as the agony of the fire makes his limbs jerk like an insect's. Dean's hands are on his face. Dean is safe. Dean is beating frantically at the curling green flame at the hem of Castiel's coat, at the fire starting to flicker around Castiel's edges, lapping at his chest, his shoulders. Castiel wants to tell him not to bother, that the real damage is being done invisibly, on another plane altogether, but speaking seems like too much of an effort. Dean is screaming. Dean is  _safe_ , why is he _screaming_ —

"Cas!" Dean is screaming. "Cas, tell me what to do, _tell me what to do_ —"

Castiel smiles, trying not to let pain twist the expression into a grimace. He cups Dean's face with one hand. The world blurs behind Dean, indistinct shapes, jumbled light and darkness. Or maybe death is just opening up behind Dean, waiting to take Castiel. Dean is still bleeding, but he'll be alright. He's safe. The void tugs at Castiel. It's a low roar in his ears, it's a long gleam of black sliding through his vision, and beyond it there is no pain.

"I love you too," Castiel says. Dean screams a response, but it's wordless, or maybe Castiel just can't make sense of words any longer. That sleek darkness slides into place behind Dean, like Castiel could just pitch forward and tumble right over Dean's shoulder, into emptiness. Dean wants to help, he knows. Dean is so beautiful, bloody and bare and terrified like this, under the soft morning sky. His soul pulses bright, so bright, and Castiel aches for it. He's never believed in anything the way he believes in Dean Winchester. Dean can help him, if Castiel can only—if he can only—

Gathering the last of his strength, Castiel manifests his wings. His last, inane thought before he passes out is that the void looks an awful lot like a very familiar car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearing the end, now.


	11. Chapter 11

When Castiel opens his eyes it is to featureless nothing, a dim grey stretching on forever. He immediately closes them again. So this is it, then. He's dead.

A lump rises in his throat as he remembers Dean, the warmth and heat of that last night.

Gradually his awareness filters out to the rest of his senses; he becomes conscious of an uneven warmth surrounding him, and then of other sensations, crowding in. A soft weight pressed against his limbs. A faint, faraway hum that is somehow vaguely familiar. A scent he knows well.

Castiel's eyes pop open again. He isn't suspended in the eternal void, after all. He's lying on his stomach in a warm bed, and the dimness is the pillow he's face-down on. He turns his head slowly, wincing as the movement sends pain lancing through his—

—through his—

He freezes. Blinks. Stares at the dark feathery expanse of his left wing, neatly folded against his bare back, half-swathed in clean white gauze.

Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, he extends the wing. Despite his care, he's unable to keep from tensing at the unfamiliar sensation. He's never physically manifested his wings before, and although their appearance mimics to some extent the shape of his true form, the sight is still strange, as is the feeling of muscle and bone, tendon and connective tissue, where he's used to only the etheric nature of his grace.

And—there should be _more_ pain, surely. Under the gauze he can feel a throbbing, itching discomfort, all the more jarring because it is housed in flesh now, not just in grace. But it's mild compared to the piercing, constant ache he's used to enduring—the pain of his true form mangled beyond repair by his fall, by Metatron's handiwork, by the months he spent being rotted out by stolen grace. And it certainly pales in comparison to the agony he remembers from his last waking moments, out on the asphalt with that caustic fire slowly eating its way into his very essence. He shudders at the visceral memory, and come to think of it, why _isn't_ he dead?

Cautiously, he extends his awareness from where it's still retracted tightly in his vessel's chest—pushes it out to his now half-splayed wing. It isn't ragged and broken the way he would've expected it to be, and he can't detect any trace of Corin's poisoning fire. The appendage is his own, unmistakably; it chimes with the sound of his grace, still closely tethered to his true form despite its physicality. And there, yes, is the silvery-white gleam of his grace, radiating out from blood vessels and feathers. But over it...Castiel stills, his heart skipping a beat that it shouldn't need anyway.

Overlaying the silver-white is the rainbowy glimmer of a human soul. Cobalt and gold and rose-pink and deep jewel-green, it eddies alongside the currents of his grace, flaring and playing over the feathers like the corona of a tiny sun.

It's impossible. It's luminous and beautiful and _impossible_. It's Dean Winchester's soul, shimmering with warmth and smeared all over his wing like rich oil paint.

A soft sound on his right makes Castiel turn his head in the other direction, and his heart stutters in his chest yet again at the sight of Dean tucked into the bed beside him, fast asleep with the covers pulled up to his chin. As Castiel watches, barely daring to breathe, Dean makes another soft noise, a mumbling sort of sigh, and squirms deeper into the blankets. His eyes crack open, slitted with sleep, and he blinks drowsily at Castiel for a moment.

"Dean," Castiel says, or tries to say. He doesn't think any sound comes out.

Dean's gaze sharpens and he smiles. It's a slow smile, and it crinkles up the laugh lines around his eyes. It makes something in Castiel melt.

"Morning, sunshine," Dean says. His voice is raspy with sleep, but he doesn't stop smiling, even when Castiel slowly reaches out with his right hand to press his fingertips against Dean's warm, cocooned body. Castiel looks past Dean and sees a familiar wall, a familiar bedside table. He recognizes the distant hum now; it's the Bunker's generators, whirring quietly in their underground halls. The scent that surrounds him is Dean's; this is Dean's bedroom, in the Bunker.

"Is this..." Castiel falters. "Is this Heaven?"

Dean yawns. "Hope not. Cause then I'd be dead."

"But...how?"

Dean shifts so that he's on his side, facing Castiel. He keeps the covers pulled up to his chin, but Castiel catches a glimpse of a bandage wrapped around his neck, and his stomach clenches as he remembers Corin's viciousness. Dean seems lucid, though—a little pale, but lovely and soft in the yellow glow of the bedside lamp.

"Sam," Dean says simply. "He saw your message. The one you posted on that antiques forum."

Castiel's jaw drops. "Sam's here? He's alright?"

"Yeah, he's the one who drove us here. He's probably out for a friggin' jog or something." Dean sighs. "He'd been tracking some kind of lead—a lead on me, I guess. Trying to get intel from a vampire nest. Deep cover. That's why he didn't contact you, I guess. Moron. In over his head, sounded like."

"Sam is more than capable," Castiel rebukes gently.

Dean rolls his eyes, but his expression is fond. "Whatever, he can explain the rest to you when he gets back. I chewed him out plenty on the way here."

"All three of us have been known to get a little...single-minded, when..." Castiel trails off. _When another one of us is in danger_ , he thinks.

"Goddamn right," Dean growls. "I can't fucking believe you. Jumping through that fire—the fuck were you thinking?"

"Like he said. It wasn't _quite_ holy fire." Castiel conjures up the memory of Corin's smug voice and grimaces. "And I surmised that if he could have killed me instantaneously he would have. Why risk the chance that I'd track him down again, however slight? So he had to have been refraining because he knew it might not kill me before I could cross the room." He shrugs. "I took a gamble that I'd last to the parking lot."

"That was your plan?" Dean says in disbelief. "Die _slowly_?"

"It worked."

" _Worked_ —yeah, it worked, you almost _died_ , Cas. You've been unconscious for _two days_. If Sam hadn't— _fuck_ , if he hadn't..." Dean catches his breath. His voice peters out into a whisper.

"I remember," Castiel says softly. "I saw the Impala. Right before I passed out." He doesn't mention that he'd thought it was, quite literally, the void come to claim him.

"Yeah. He—he pulled up right as you were—as you were—" A haunted look passes over Dean's face for an instant, like a shadow, before he clears his throat roughly and continues, "Anyway, he took one look at the shit all over your wings and knew it was Greek fire, the huge nerd, and we had the right stuff in the trunk to put it out."

"Just like that?"

"No, not _just like that_. It was a lot, man. You were—fuck, you were in a bad way, Cas. I thought." Dean falters yet again. "I thought you were going to die."

"I was," says Castiel. He frowns. "Sam shouldn't have been able to save me. That fire, Dean, it was going slowly, but it was already so deep in my wings, I could feel it, it should've—"

"Killed you?" Dean says, his voice hollow. "And you knew that, didn't you? You were just going to—die, and leave me there?"

"Better than letting that monster take you."

"No, it wasn't fucking _better_ , Cas," Dean says furiously. His soul bristles, heat surging through it. "You would've found me eventually, you should've let him take me, that was the whole _point_ —"

"I wasn't willing to take that risk—"

"I wasn't willing to watch you die!"

"But I am _not_ dead." Castiel raises his voice a little, lets it reverberate off the ceiling. Dean quiets, eyes going wide. "I am not dead, and you are not Corin's fucking prisoner, Dean, and we are _here_ and _safe_ , and you of all people are certainly in no position to criticize the risks I take."

Dean stares at Castiel for a moment and then exhales, the fight draining visibly out of him. His soul settles, though it still pulses with muted bronzes and reds.

"I couldn't have borne to let him take you again," Castiel adds gently. "Not after knowing what he was capable of. Even if there was only a chance, I had to try."

"I know," says Dean. "And yeah, you're right, I would've done the same. I just—Cas, I was afraid. I was _so afraid_ you were going to die _right there_ in that stupid parking lot and there was nothing I could do—" He dislodges the covers as he gestures helplessly at the air.

Castiel sucks in a sharp breath. Dean's hands are bandaged from wrist to fingertip. "Dean—what—"

"It's nothing," Dean says hastily.

" _Dean_."

"I. Um." Dean drops his eyes. "I tried to put it out. The fire. Didn't work, obviously. I was—I wasn't really thinking straight. At the time." He starts to pull his hands back under the covers, but Castiel reaches out and grabs one of his wrists, arresting the motion.

"You touched my wings," he says slowly. He shifts his gaze to take in his wings again, those soft colors twining with his grace. It doesn't make sense—it doesn't make _any_ sense, but he feels it in his bones, in his grace, in every molecule of his true form. "It was you, it was your soul. You—you shielded me with it, somehow. _That's_ why. That's why I'm not dead."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Yeah, Cas, I don't think—"

"Shut _up_. There are traces of your soul all over my wings, Dean. There shouldn't be, but there are—it's knitted all through my grace now, I can _see_ it. The fire should've killed me in seconds, but it didn't. You kept me alive. Your soul."

"That's impossible," Dean says slowly.

"Impossible like me sensing your soul even with those sigils carved into you?" Castiel says quietly. "Impossible like you feeling what I felt when we were together that night?"

Dean blinks. His soul surges midnight-blue and palest pink, but his expression veers toward distaste as he grumbles, "This is some chick-flick shit you're giving me right now, Cas."

"You are infuriating," Castiel says, and leans in close to kiss him. Dean sighs, his body relaxing instantly. He opens his mouth hungrily around Castiel's and Castiel breathes a spark of grace into him, sending it to Dean's hands and the still-raw wound at his neck. Dean gasps a little and reaches out to clutch at Castiel's shoulders and drag him still closer. Dean is shirtless too, Castiel discovers to his satisfaction as he pushes the covers out of the way; he wraps his arms around Dean, slots a thigh between Dean's knees. His left wing arches overhead, the feathers splaying.

Dean pulls a few inches back, though he keeps his hands tight on Castiel's shoulders. His eyes dart up toward the wing, its dark feathers, the limned colors that Castiel knows he can't see.

"Can I touch them?" Dean says, almost shyly. He sounds a little breathless; his hair is a wreck. He looks beautiful. Castiel immediately aches to have Dean's hands on his wings, to feel the electricity of Dean's touch against every part of him. Still, he hesitates.

"They're not...presentable," he mutters, resisting the urge to tuck his face into Dean's neck. He can't imagine what the wings must have looked like when he'd first manifested them in the parking lot, without the shielding mercy of all this gauze. Tattered, mangled things, even before Corin's fire had infected them.

Dean frowns. "What the hell are you talking about?" He starts tugging the bandages off his now-healed hands. "Cas, they're beautiful. When you pulled them out of nowhere, in the lot, that was..." He sucks in a breath. "Well, it was terrifying, honestly, and also they were on fire, so there was that. But they were friggin' gorgeous. They still are."

"Still," Castiel echoes. He studies Dean. Feels anew the throbbing discomfort under the bandages, and has to suppress a quake of fear. "Dean, how much..."

Dean hesitates.

"It's alright," says Castiel. "They don't hurt." The fire might have cauterized the nerve endings to some extent, he supposes. Or maybe the influence of Dean's soul healed the worst of the damage. He steels himself. "How much was burned, before you and Sam put it out?"

"A bit," says Dean quietly. "Quite...quite a bit, Cas. We put gauze over it, I don't know if the...if the feathers will..."

"It's alright," says Castiel again. "I couldn't fly with them anyway. They didn't have much...much purpose, as it was." He tries to make himself believe the words.

"I mean it, though," Dean insists. "They're freaking amazing. I still can't believe you just...have them coming out of your back like that. They're incredible."

"They're broken," says Castiel. He tries to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice.

"So was I," says Dean, quietly. He crumples up the last of the bandages between his palms.

"No," says Castiel, the ache in his chest suddenly sweet, like summer honey. "No. Never." He tangles his fingers in Dean's hair and kisses him, hard. Dean makes a soft sound that thrums in Castiel's chest. It was Dean's soul that stayed the witch's fire, kept it from burrowing deep into Castiel's true form; it was Dean's soul that healed Castiel's wings, repaired the essence of them, even if it couldn't erase all the damage. It's Dean's soul that coils and hums behind Dean's eyes now, trembling a little with remembered pain, with new pleasure.

Castiel makes a decision; he laces his fingers through Dean's, pulls Dean's hand up to settle it against the curve of his wing.

Dean gasps, curling his fingers deep into the feathers. Castiel finds himself echoing the sound as warmth blossoms in his wing, his grace sparking blissfully under Dean's touch.

" _Castiel_ ," Dean hisses, drawing it out, his mouth curving beautifully around the syllables of Castiel's name, his soul flaring brilliantly. He runs his fingers along Castiel's wing, over gauze and feather alike, and Castiel stifles a whimper.

"Take the bandages off," he groans. The itch in his wings is unbearable now, a prickling heat in the muscle and skin of the bandaged areas.

"You're not healed yet," Dean protests.

"Take them _off_ , Dean, please, it _hurts_ —"

"Okay, okay," Dean soothes. "Okay, lie on your stomach, hang on."

Castiel stretches out, folding his hands underneath his chin. Dean climbs onto his back, shoving the blankets aside so that he can straddle Castiel. Castiel exhales under Dean's weight; he resists the urge to press back into Dean, to flip them both over and pin Dean to the mattress. Dean's touch, his hands brushing against feathers on their way to the bandages, make him shiver. " _Dean_."

"Okay, okay, hold still." Dean's fingers work nimbly at the bandages, unspooling the gauze in a long strip. Then he stops suddenly. Castiel hears a sharp intake of breath.

"What?" he says in alarm. "Dean, what?"

"I—" Dean stammers. "They—"

Castiel extends his wings immediately, propping himself on his elbows and twisting his neck to peer over his shoulder. And then he, too, catches his breath.

There'd been gaps in his feathers, before—old injuries he was too weak to heal after he fell from Heaven's favor, as well as areas where the feathers had simply disintegrated as too much stolen grace chewed through his true form. Then, too, the remnant of his own grace, once he'd finally reclaimed it, had been paltry; he'd been unable to reconstitute his true form without additional losses, so that was more feathers broken or destroyed, sacrificed to Metatron's spell.

There are no gaps now. Instead, intermingled with his own dark pinions are feathers of iridescent silver, catching the light and reflecting it as dark glints of rainbowy color, an echo of the faint residue of Dean's soul still wreathing the rest of the wing with its soft aura.

Castiel stares, speechless.

"Those." Dean coughs. "Uh. Those weren't there before."

Castiel does move, then; he twists gracefully to catch Dean around the waist and roll him over, onto his back. Castiel comes down on top of him, angling his wings to balance. He braces himself on his forearms so that his face is inches above Dean's.

"You," says Castiel, and to his ears his voice is breathless, a wondering sound. "Dean Winchester, I don't know how you do the things you do, but you are..." He pauses, tries and fails to find words. "Incredible," he says finally, repeating what Dean had said to him.

"Me," Dean almost squeaks. "Cas, I...definitely did _not_ do that."

"Trust me," says Castiel. "You definitely did." He leans down to nip gently at Dean's lower lip. "It's you," he murmurs into Dean's jawline. "It's all you. I can feel it."

"Is...is this even a thing that happens? To angels?"

"Not to my knowledge," Castiel admits. The itching has eased; he recognizes it now as coming from the new feathers, trapped as they'd been under the tight gauze, and almost laughs out of sheer joy. He curves his wings overhead, a canopy above him and Dean. "But you and I, we seem to make a habit of being unprecedented, don't we?"

Dean reaches up, and Castiel arches his back as Dean slides his palms over black and silver feathers alike, pulling away the last of the gauze.

"Dean," he growls into the hollow of Dean's throat. He kisses along the skin of Dean's ribs, moves back up to mouth at Dean's collarbone and then his jaw. Dean exhales in a harsh, needy pant, lifting his hips against Castiel's and tipping his head back to expose his throat. Dean's fingers are buried in his feathers, sending heat splintering through Castiel's body like lightning; even on this plane, his wings are as close as it comes to being an open conduit to his true form, and the sensation of it, the _proximity_ of Dean, the blaze of his soul, is nearly overwhelming.

He raises himself up on his hands again, so that he can stare down at Dean. The rainbowy light that plays off his feathers is speckling Dean's face with flecks of color; it mingles with the soft gold radiance of the lamp and with the shadows cast by the wings themselves, a tangle of light and dark and color on Dean's skin. Castiel shivers, overcome by an intensity of feeling that he can't quite put words to. God help him, he is going to give Dean Winchester the world.

Dean is looking up at Castiel, and under the shifting light his eyes are soft with wonder. He laces his fingers behind Castiel's neck.

"Cas, I—" His breath hitches.

"I know," says Castiel. He knows, he knows. He wasn't made for Heaven; he was made for this. He wants to fall and fall again, until there is nothing he knows so well as the man underneath him. "I love you, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys.
> 
> Guys. It's DONE.
> 
> I'm so very sorry for all the long delays between updates, PLEASE forgive my irregular posting schedule and my snail's writing pace. I've been struggling with a lot of writer's block this past year and there were chapters I felt I would never get right (and maybe I didn't, haha, but at least I did get them _out_ ). Thank you everyone who stuck with the story and came back to read each chapter, thank you THANK you everyone who commented and everyone who commented MULTIPLE TIMES, literally adding years to my lifespan. I really hope you enjoyed this final chapter with its combination of fluff and angst, and please if you're so inclined let me know what you thought of it and of the fic as a whole!
> 
> Again, this story is dedicated to the fabulous Eloise_Enchanted, who has graciously beta-read for me on several occasions and who PROBABLY WOULD'VE BEEN TOTALLY HAPPY WITH THE NICE SHORT PROMPTLY-DELIVERED 3K-WORD FIC I SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN INSTEAD but is getting this piecemeal angst pile

**Author's Note:**

> A note on the chronology: so the timing of this fic is somewhat deliberately ambiguous. It should be considered set in later seasons, say season 11 or 12, but during a theoretical six-month period where nothing else is going on and no characters other than Dean and Castiel (and Sam) need to be taken into consideration. So I have altered canon to the extent that I created the 6+ month gap in which the story takes place.


End file.
